From tha questions in the old quiz I posted the other day, many are straightforward and a few are devious, I’m afraid that some are a little obscure or badly worded. But some I’m quite proud of, and these tend to have something in common.
Which 1985 film was directed by Steven Spielberg and featured Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey?
Easy for anyone with IMDB or Wikipedia access. But when I set this question it was aimed at undergraduates, most of whom would have been about ten when the film came out. It had been shown on telly (I remembering watching it) but all the same it wasn’t likely to spring to mind for most of the participants.
Who were the last nation to win football’s world cup in their own country?
Remember that this quiz is from 1997 so France were still a year away from winning. I’m sure lots of people would get this straight away as there’s a fair overlap between pub quizzers and football stat geeks. But for the rest of you, how many tournaments would you go back through before jumping to the ‘obvious’ wrong answer of England?
These questions are on topics – film, football – that people lots of people are interested in. They’re not even about obscure niches within those topics – Steve Spielberg and the World Cup can’t be called niche. But they are on the edge of, or just outside of, most people’s “comfort zone”. And that’s what I think makes a good pub quiz question.