Running a remote pub quiz #COVID

Last Friday I ran a pub quiz with a load of friends and it was ace, so I wanted to write up the basics in case others found it useful. I’ve added loads of quiz content below as many people have asked me to share.

A brilliant mix of friends and family

What you need

• The internet and a laptop/tablet
• A group chat platform — I use whereby.com as it require no plug-in and is usually super stable
• A couple of hours to plan quiz content
• A date and time to run the quiz
• Willing participants :)

Structure

I planned five rounds and this took about 90 minutes. Beforehand I setup a whatsapp group to ensure everyone was still up for it, and during the quiz I used this to share the emoji round (below). My wife and I hosted from our lounge and kept a running score of all groups.

We allowed a wee break midway through as it was a ‘bring a bottle’ type quiz :)

Round 1 — standard questions

I got a list of 15 general knowledge questions from this site and tweaked a few. I talked each through with the participants and asked them to write down their answers and then their scores.

QUESTION SET 1

1. Which female superstar has a daughter called Blue Ivy? Beyonce
2. What type of angle has less than 90 degrees? Acute
3. In which UK city was the 1997 movie ‘The Full Monty’ set? Sheffield
4. Besides fingers and toes, what other human body part has unique prints? The tongue
5. Which robot was CP30’s partner in Star Wars? R2D2
6. What’s the chemical symbol for Potassium? K
7. Which Christmas poem includes the lyrics ‘not a creature was stirring’? Twas the Night before Christmas
8. Peter Andre used to be married to which famous model? Katie Price
9. Which country presented the Statue of Liberty to America as a gift? France
10. How many sides does a pentagon have? 5
11. What has the chemical symbol H20? Water
12. Before the Beatles were formed, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison were originally members of which group? The Quarrymen
13. What is the name of the Earth’s largest ocean? Pacific
14. Which American state is known as the Garden State? New Jersey
15. What word can refer to a country, a type of meat or three consecutive strikes in bowling? Turkey

QUESTION SET 2

1. Which song did Bruce Springsteen win an Oscar for? Streets of Philadelphia
2. What is the largest organ in the human body? Skin
3. Which Disney film features the song ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’? Pinocchio
4. How many degrees do the interior angles of a triangle always equal? 180
5. How many countries of the world begin with the letter Z? Zambia and Zimbabwe
6. What does DVD stand for? Digital versatile disc
7. What is the smallest ocean in the world? The Arctic
8. Which railway station was the first one in London? Euston
9. Which planet is closest to the sun? Mercury
10. What are the two main ingredients of a ‘screwdriver’ cocktail? Vodka and orange juice

QUESTION SET 3

1. How many finger holes does a recorder have running down the front of the instrument? — Seven
2. How many times does the average person fart each day — 15
3. Does the gravitational pull from the Earth increase or decrease with higher altitude? Decrease
4. Which song begins with the lyrics, ‘I know I stand in line until you think you have the time to spend an evening with me’? — Something stupid
5. Average penis length in UK when not erect, in cms — 9cm
6. How old was Queen Victoria when she became Queen of England? — 18
7. What type of pasta is shaped like a bow-tie? — Farfelle
8. What is celebrated on July 14 in France? — Bastille day
9. Which country is nicknamed the ‘Cockpit of Europe’? Belgium
10. How many grams of poo does an adult average per day? — 400

Round 2 — guess the location.

I used Google Earth to capture ten famous landmarks and used screenshare to take the participants through each, again asking them to write their answers. On Google Earth you can turn off captions which is handy for screengrabs.

The Kremlin from above (note that I chopped out the mini globe bottom right)

Round 3 — emoji quiz

I used an emoji quiz that had done the rounds on Whatsapp the week before but thankfully hadn’t reached my participants yet. There’s a ton of similar visual/emoji puzzles online if you search, but I’ve included mine below:

Q1: ⚫ 💀 Q2: 🦶👄 Q3: ☕ 🐝 Q4: 🐷🦅 Q5: 🟨🥵 Q6: 💊 🎳 🅰 Q7: 🐓 🅿 🐃 Q8: 🇹🇭 🍜 🆔 🥵 Q9: 🦘 🔔 🅰

1. Black death
2. Foot and mouth
3. TB
4. Swine flu
5. Yellow fever
6. Ebola
7. Chicken pox
8. Thypoid
9. Rubella

Round 4 — supermarket sweep

For this round I set ten challenges, asking participants to find an item from somewhere in their house. I mixed it up so they had to go all over, including food items, batteries, loo roll etc etc. Was a lot of fun and got everyone running about.

Round 5 — guess the song

I picked ten COVID related tracks (Ghosttown by the Specials etc) and played the first ten seconds of each track, asking them to write down their answers.

And that’s it — I’ve run three quizzes now and it’s been super fun.