How to Run a Christmas Quiz Night for a Pub, Club or Work Party

A Christmas quiz night for twenty teams is a different animal from a quiz round the dinner table. You need structure, a microphone, a way of keeping score that doesn’t take forty minutes, and questions nobody can look up on the bus home from last year’s.

The shape of a good night

Plan for two to two and a half hours, including a break. Ten rounds of ten works well with a fifteen-minute interval after round five. Start on time: the room forgives a late finish more easily than a late start.

Hand out a picture sheet (or an emoji or dingbats sheet) as teams arrive. It gives early birds something to do and fills the gap while stragglers find a table. Collect it at the interval.

Mix your rounds

A room full of teams is a room full of different strengths. Mix it up so every table has a round they own:

• Christmas general knowledge to open
• Christmas No.1s, with the answers played out loud
• Films and telly, which the whole room has an opinion on
• Food and drink
• Christmas around the world
• Picture, emoji and dingbat rounds on paper, worked on during the evening
• A hard round to finish, for double points

If you want a taste of the formats, our free Christmas emoji quiz is a good sample of how puzzle rounds play in a busy room.

Scoring without the chaos

Have teams swap sheets with the table next to them after each round, read the answers, and collect the marked sheets. Keep a scoresheet (a simple grid of teams against rounds) and read out the top three after rounds three, six and nine. Tension is the whole point.

Settle the rules before round one: no phones, the quizmaster’s answer is final, and spelling doesn’t count unless the question is about spelling. Say it once, clearly, and you won’t have to say it again.

The admin nobody mentions

• Team names. Collect them on arrival and write them on the scoresheet in advance. A Christmas team names list on each table speeds things up.
• A tie-breaker. Have two ready. Closest-number questions are the fairest.
• Prizes. A bottle for the winners, and something daft for last place. The wooden spoon gets a bigger cheer than first prize.
• Licensing. If people pay to enter, make sure the quiz you use is licensed for it. Many free quizzes online aren’t.

Save yourself the writing

Writing a hundred good questions takes a weekend; checking them takes another. Our Christmas Quiz Night is a hundred brand-new questions over ten rounds, with picture, emoji and dingbat rounds, team answer sheets, a scoresheet, tie-breakers and a licence for your venue.