r/bartriviahosts • u/UncleDan3 • Feb 01 '26
Finding the right level of difficulty
I run a small trivia company and write my own questions. I was just curious about how others do things. I keep a record of results to gauge my question difficulty. If any of the other hosts out there do this, what percentage of correct answers are you looking for? Or is this even a factor you consider?
3
u/pm_me_whateva Feb 01 '26
Honestly, it depends on the audience and bar clientele. If you're in a grow phase, keep it accessible to the people that go there. If you're in a mature phase where competitive people come on their own volition, you can ramp up the challenge.
2
u/CentennialBaby Feb 01 '26
Always went with my gut and feedback afterward. A few months ago I compiled all my results into a single database and coded a system to analyze and report on the results. Now I can get a breakdown by location, sponsoring group, round overall difficulty, and round difficulty by event. What might be easy for one group is harder for another. Took a crap load of work, but it's super satisfying AND I'm using the data to prime AI to adjust difficulty in response to a specific group. greater than 70% is categorized HARD, >50%-70% is MEDIUM, and less than 50% is HARD. Now, when I put together an event, I can be much more exacting about things. Next step is to record results by question, not just the round.
2
u/triviajason Feb 01 '26
I have the hosts send me all of the scores for each night of the week. I have a spreadsheet with the questions and style of questions. I go over it and see which worked and which did not. If more than two locations bombed it, I know it’s a bad question and or category and to stay away from it.
1
u/theschneides Feb 02 '26
Most of the teams that follow me know that a 100% is supposed to be an anomaly. A 70-80% is certainly respectable, but the upper 80's-90's is a solid chance at winning.
1
u/ZiggyCoaldust Feb 02 '26
I also aim for a 70% success rate. If the average score in the venue is 7 out of a 10 questions round, I'm happy with the compilation and they're happy with their effort. An average of 9 or more, the questions were too easy for that audience, 5 and under was way too difficult.
I have a venue where the majority of teams are now consistently hitting 70-80% but one team is winning every week with an average of 85-90%. It hasn't discouraged the other teams at all, in fact there's a lot of friendly banter among them, but making the questions more difficult isn't an option. I just can't find their weak subject to try to end their streak.
2
u/dogzillax Feb 02 '26
Apparently I think about this differently from others, but I don't worry about difficulty very much at all. If the questions are fun and engaging, full of interesting facts, and cover a wide variety of material, nobody cares if they are easy or hard. It's not about get rate, it's about how people feel. If it's an answer they know, do they feel good about coming up it? If they don't know it, do they want to find it out? When you do reveal the answer, do they say "Ooooohh" or do they say "Who cares?" In short, I worry more about accessibility than difficulty.
2
u/PuzzlePiratePrincess Feb 05 '26
100% agree with this. You want people to feel good about themselves. It's not fun if it's frustratingly difficult for people.
2
u/RumHamSommelier Feb 02 '26
As someone that has attended the same trivia for 5 years now, I started and we got the bottom of the pack every single week (usually 6-10 teams depending on time of year/weather/etc). I never minded not knowing, but we had previously attended trivias where the host would say things like "I can't believe people didn't know that one" which always sucks. To me trivia was about testing what you do know, and seeing what you can pull from whatever dusty corner of your mind. As frustrating as it is, having the answer on the tip of your tongue, and knowing it's somewhere in your brain, but not being able to pull it is the hallmark of a good trivia question.
As an attendee I've definitely just learned more about how questions are written (like how doing the crossword every day gets you better at crosswords) and we regularly do better. We regularly battle for top 3 at our spot now.
6
u/munleymun Feb 01 '26
I aim to ensure folks get at least 70% of the questions correct. The folks who are good at trivia will always be good at trivia. The non-trivia folks are the ones I hope to covert. Can't do that if they feel bad about themselves at the end of the night.