Tuesday 31 July 2012

Multiple point questions

While we’re on the subject of the conversation I had with my quiz friend last night, I think that I might mention an interesting discussion that we had about multiple questions in General knowledge rounds. It was Keith’s turn to set the quiz on Sunday night, and although Keith does a much straighter , less gimmicky quiz than the other setters at the Dyffryn Arms, he does often put multiples into his rounds. Most of the time these will be worth a maximum of five points. However, on Sunday night one of the questions in one of the rounds was worth 10 points.

Now, in the interests of fairness I think I should say that these weren’t all extremely difficult points to get – we managed 8 of them ourselves. Keith quoted 5 lines from different pop songs – all from the 60s unless I’m very much mistaken. All you had to do was name the song for a point, and the singer for another point. I think that the one we missed was a Kinks song.

As I say, I’m not complaining , since we certainly didn’t lose much ground on that question even if we didn’t gain any, but I do know that some people have quite strong opinions about a multiple question being worth more than 4 or 5 points in any one round, and in a way I can see where they are coming from. In a way, with ten points available it’s really a round within a round. There is a body of opinion that says that it’s wrong to have so much riding on just one question. Well, I don’t know about that. However, had the question been on one of those subjects where John and I would only have been able to scrape 2 or 3 points between us, then knowing me I’d be singing to a very different hymn sheet.

I guess that I stand pretty much in the middle of the debate here. Of course you can ask questions worth ten points on a single topic if you want to. But on the other hand I do think that if you’re going to do it, then go the whole hog and make it a separate specialist round. On a purely personal level I think a maximum of five points is best for a single multiple question. That’s just my opinion, and as always, feel free to disagree.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As part of my quiz format, I do a 10 pointer every week. It takes the form of a list.

Eg.
The 10 most commonly used colours on flags.
The 10 ways you can be out at cricket.
The last 10 US Vice Presidents.

and my personal favourite,

The 10 things that 'Right Said Fred' were too sexy for. :-)

Paul Steeples said...

In an earlier post, you commented on the increasing age-profile of quiz participants in your area. I'm afraid questions based on the lyrics from '60s songs may be making a contribution to this...

untruth said...

My least favourite kind of multiple points questions are those which are presented as say, a three pointer, yet in truth are only a one-pointer, that is, questions where one would naturally know all parts of the answer or none at all.

The worst one of this type that I've come across was 'What were the names of the tunnels used in the film "The Great Escape"?'

After all, there wouldn't be a single quizzer anywhere who would say "Well, one was Tom, one was Dick, and - oh bugger, I can't remember the other one!"

DanielFullard said...

Agree with above and everybodys favourite Red Tooth are notably bad for it in their "top 5 rounds".

Questions on Star Trek etc are hardly guessable if you have never seen it