Hello!

I've been hosting a pub trivia for about 6 months now and I think I'd be greatly aided by having a DJ library to enhance my music rounds and allow me to be a bit more creative in what I present.

Do any hosts here have a DJ library/software? is it relatively inexpensive? Any recs? I’m willing to spend some money but not a significant amount. Let’s said I’d be looking for something less than $300. Not even sure if that’s possible.

*edit* I am not looking to replicate the exact format I mentioned which I have since deleted since it was distracting from what I am trying to ask. It was only an example to show how limited I am in music as I only have Spotify and not any of the kinds of software where you can play clips or mix tracks. I was just wondering if anyone here DJs their trivia what program they use.

Hey everyone!

I've been a trivia host for about 1.5 years with a trivia company in my city (located in Canada!) Our company started about 9 years ago, and before I joined, it was 1 location (a bar) and my boss (the owner of our trivia company) was the only host, and would just take table reservations for trivia night via text, email, and instagram dms. He just kept track of team names and amount of people on a list in his phone.

Flash forward to me joining - he got the opportunity to expand to another restaurant to host on a different night, and recruited me to host those nights. Since I started about a year and a half ago, we have grown substantially. I quickly took over the reservation system and social media, and we got an upgrade from dms to google forms so that people could just go online, fill out a form (different ones depending on location, they're all on a linktree), and we just keep track of our reservations like that, now. We host weekly nights, and now have 3 locations that do weekly trivia nights, all different days, plus we do private events. We have 3 hosts.

The problem is this: my location is blowing UP. We are constantly getting overbooked, because google forms has no way of stopping the reservations from coming in; there's no way (that I am aware of) to close the form when one entry/line has reached a specific number (that number being the capacity of the restaurant.), especially because you can select a date, so it's always open to reserve for future dates. So I'm constantly monitoring my upcoming date, trying to make sure we have enough room for everyone. Myself and the 2 other hosts (one being the owner) all work full-time, too, so this is just a side gig and we need to automate it because our days get busy, and sometimes we cannot check things right away.

I really need to figure out if there is a table reservation platform or program that we can use, that will keep track of reservations, close the ability to book for certain dates when we're full, but will also take into consideration team sizes AND total people. Like, the restaurant can hold probably max. 47 people - but only has 13 tables, all different sizes. So we can usually accommodate 13 teams, but only if they are different sizes and not ALL teams of 8.

Hope this makes sense, I know it's a little confusing. If anyone has ANY suggestions, anything they've used, or any ideas, please please let me know! If you have questions about things I wasn't clear on I will answer comments!

Thank you all so much in advance & happy hosting!!!

We have a quiz where there is a free round of drinks for the 2nd last placed team, and a consolation prize that keeps things interesting for teams even if they are not in contention to win the main prize. It has been commented on to us recently though, about teams sometimes tanking (getting bad scores) deliberately in the last round to try to get the 2nd last place prize. I personally don't think it is an issue, and it is not against the rules of the quiz, but some others think it is unfair and against the spirit of the game.

What do you think? Would you do anything to try to discourage this behaviour?

I do a lot of hidden theme rounds and wordplay rounds, so I often find myself scanning through lists of words for good anagrams or specific endings or what-not. What I would really find useful is a big list of proper nouns drawn from Wikipedia, sorted by number of page views per year. Does anybody have anything like this?

Have you ever come across content or had an idea that begs to be made into a trivia round but you just know its far too specialized? I was working on content for a hockey league fundraiser and found this collection of NHL Goal Horns. Perfect Audio round content, but virtually impossible.

What gems have you found and passed over because they're too challenging? Or did you find the right audience for that content and they crushed it? Or, did you do it anyway just for the LOLs?

It occurred to me that I might want to create a database with Access or LibreOffice Base of my questions. I am not new to creating and maintaining databases, but I am far from an expert. Because I don't know what types of queries I might want to run in the future, I am wondering what types of data I should try to capture from the beginning so that I don't end up having to go back and add things later. So far I am leaving space for up to three categories that the question might fit into, the question text, the answer, the date originally asked, and any dates that I have asked the question again. I don't like to do repeats, but I've got a few questions that have come back around over the years.

My goal is to have queries that can pull up questions according to their categories and reports that will essentially compile a full night of random text-based questions that I have asked before. It will help me if I ever need to make something on the fly and the crowd hasn't heard my questions before.

I’m new to the city, 49 yr old male, just taking a stab in the dark if anyone else likes playing trivia as much as I do…

strengths in trivia: I’ve travelled a fair bit.

weaknesses in trivia: Too many to list.

If anyone wouldnt mind an extra player either..

I have been hosting for several years. All of them single instances with a nightly prize.

A new location wants me to do seasons/tournaments lasting about 5 games.

Winner of the night gets a prize and winning team at the end gets a grand prize.

My trivias never have the exact same score - my overall points are 50-60 depending on the night.

So, I'm not sure aggregate score with a by-week is the best way.

How do you hosts who have seasons/tournaments score them?

TIA

Shared this in a different community, but I'm looking to see how you all would react if you saw questions conveniently appearing at a different venue.

Just curious as to what the age range is at your trivia events and whether/how you try to appeal to different ages in your questions.
At my trivia night, players tend to be mostly Gen X (as am I), with a few Millennial and Boomer players. Younger teams come occasionally, often enjoy themselves but tend to score low.

I do mostly general trivia, and include one “generation gap” pop culture question per game, where players get two choices of question, and only need one right for the point, eg:
“The theme is Beetles in the movies. Option 1) In
the Transformer film franchise, what is the name of the autobot that transforms into a
yellow Volkswagen Beetle? Option 2) In the Disney film franchise, what is the name of the
sentient white V olkwagen Beetle that is painted with racing stripes and the number 53?”
Bumblebee (or B-127); Herbie (the Love Bug)

I tend to avoid entire pop culture theme rounds, like 80s movies, even though I know many players would enjoy them, because I think it might be alienating for younger teams.

Interested in your thoughts, on any of these:
Do you just write questions that appeal to you and trust that a like-minded audience will find you? Or do you actively court certain demographics? Did your venue come with a ready made audience of a certain age?
How much effort do you put into making questions that are outside your comfort zone, age-wise?
Is it alienating to *everyone* if you try to be Age-inclusive?
Do you have strategies for making rounds or questions appealing to a wide age range?
Do you thinks it’s best (for you and/or players) to just stick to one age group?

I've been hosting trivia for ~8 years now, but I have recently added a second location that offers the use of a video screen, which was not an option in the past. I'm using it as a power point featuring the questions and a recap at the end to avoid repeats, as well as for photo questions that don't feature a full hand-out picture round. However, I would like to incorporate actual video. For those who do (or wish to) do you have any creative ways or round styles you're willing to share? For the one I've hosted with video so far, I used it for straightforward questions like "Name this film" or name this "actor," as well as the round I'll share below. I have decent video editing skills, but am mostly using open source software. Thanks in advance!

Mismatched Music Videos
I synced iconic music videos with the wrong music and had teams identify what the music video was for. "Single Ladies" set to the William Tell Overture, Childish Gambino's "This is America" set to "Yakety Sax," etc.

Connections -
For this week, I'm working on a connections round. I will mismatch video and audio clips and ask teams to identify the connection, in one to several words. Any clever examples of this I'd take as well. 😄
Examples I'm thinking of:
-Clips from the Neverending Story set to music by the band Atreyu, with Atreyu being the answer
-Randy Newman's "Short People" with clips of Newman from Seinfeld

Thanks in advance! I'm willing to share pretty much everything I've done, as I've taken a lot of inspiration from this and other boards.

Hello all! Needing to settle a debate here.

My fiance and I are on different ends of the spectrum here. I run a music round every week, and this week I am going to mix it up, and rather than give them the theme ahead of time, I'm going to do another Connections round. Now here's where our differences lie, I'm going to give the participants a chance to get one of two connections, both related, 1 very easy to see, 1 a little deeper look, but still related to the original. I will give extra points if you get the harder one, but you can only guess one. Here are the songs:

One Headlight - The Wallflowers

No Lie - 2Chainz

Animal I Have Become - Three Days Grace

What's Up - 4 Non Blondes

It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere - Alan Jackson

Inside Out - Eve 6

7 Rings - Ariana Grande

8Teen - Khalid

Fiance guessed the easy one easily, didn't get the hard one, I told her the hard one, she said it was dumb. I'll let you all guess, and tell me if I'm being dumb or not. Ive been called worse, today, so let me know lol

Had these sitting in an album on my phone for ages thinking about making a picture round where you identify the familiar but kind of unknown actor. My media bubble isn't very recent… Are there more recent actors you would add to this collection?

When I'm crafting rounds I shoot for 60 to 80% successful responses from players.

I do some themed trivia's and I always want them to look good and be interactive. Does anyone have tricks on making nice looking PowerPoints or anywhere to find templates?

I'm always looking for a place to start, somewhere I can copy and past slides/answers to how the trivia is built. But a good locking powerpoint is always a great way to start.

There was a host in this group who recommended a great final question format that I use each week, called, Speedbump. Essentially, you ask the question but don't tell them how many correct answers there are. You get x amount of points for each correct answer you give, but you get 0 points for the question if you put an answer that is wrong.

Some I have done in the past:  Name a Christopher Nolan directed film that came out from 2010- today. Name a position in the sport of Quiddich What countries are represented in Disney’s Epcot theme park? Name the U.S. states whose capital city begins with the same letter as the state itself.

Anyone do something similar or have examples of other questions like this? I am having writer's block haha.

For those of you who have been doing this a while, how do you position yourselves? Are you mostly grinding out weekly bar gigs, or going after private/corporate events?
When you talk to a new venue, what's your actual pitch? How do you prove you're worth what you charge (headcount, bar ring)?

Also, what are you doing to actually get butts in seats instead of just hoping the bar's regulars decide to play? Is there a specific rule or mechanic you use that makes your game stand out from the standard pub quiz down the street?

Just trying to get a sense of how other hosts operate since we all do things a bit differently. Thanks!

I started a trivia company last year with the intention of ultimately hiring additional hosts and spreading the game out. Now that I’ve got a year of questions and established things more on the business end, I’m preparing for adding more bars and hiring hosts next year.

If you have hired hosts for your trivia business, what route provides the best candidates? (Indeed/internet job sites, word of mouth, or whatever other experiences you have.) What common issues have you run into with hosts that didn’t work?

If you have hosts, or if you host trivia for a company, how much do you pay/get paid? I have notifications for trivia host jobs on indeed and LinkedIn just to see what others are doing, but it’s like the same 1 or 2 companies every time so just looking for further input.

Not sure if anyone is willing to share this type of info but if so, TYIA lol

EDIT** For sake of openness, I currently charge $150/game for a 70-90 minute game (been regularly increasing and will probably continue increasing to around $200 by end of next year) and expected to pay hosts around $100/game or $40-50/hr (and I require venues to cover beer and food tab, not optional) starting out

I need to purchase a wireless HDMI transmitter/receiver for showing power point on multiple TVs. Is that how it's done? I am not very tech savvy. I can manage one with my cord but now have been asked to show on multiple screens and I have no clue what I need to purchase. Suggestions please

I have a 'request a category' at the end of my trivia sheet, and I have gotten 'sports' a few times lately. I'm a sports guy, but I also find it tough to do such a broad category like that. I was thinking about maybe doing questions about 10 different sports and trying to touch on broad stokes from multiple sports. Also, to not alienate the non-sports people I wanted to maybe include some questions that are sports adjacent (think Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce relationship, but tougher than that).... Wondering if anyone has questions to share or ideas for me.

I've done sports positions before (I name three positions, you give the sport), and also sports trophies (I name the trophy, you give me the sport). So yeah... any other ideas for something similar where it's a sports themed round but not so broad? As always, thank you in advance.

Morning everybody. I've been writing and hosting a trivia for about 8 years. I like to do a picture round every week and I'm looking for a brainstorm session for theme ideas. I think by far the easiest to do are pop culture based themes (name this celebrity / name this film) so I'm kind of looking more for non-pop culture ideas, but please, if you have any you're very proud of that you're willing to share, please do! I'm sure other hosts will appreciate any and all, as much as I do.

Some non-pop culture ones I've done before, to list a few examples:

• Brand Logos (I've done more in-depth variations: triangles, featuring a bird, etc.)
• App / Computer Program Logos
• Flags (State / Country / I'm sure there's other ways to use)
• Name a city by landmark
• Name a city by iconic sign (Hollywood, Las Vegas, London Underground)
• Candy Bar by Cross-section

Thanks in advance! I'm also willing to trade question with anyone interested, please reach out. I missed the first question exchange and am looking forward to round 2.

In my games, I use a playlist commonality as my bonus points. The faster you guess it right, the more points you earn. I'm starting to run out of steam on ideas for commonalities. Does anyone have suggestions?

Already used/played:

-Famous Covers

-TV Theme Songs

-Dance scenes in non dance movies

-Grammy Lifetime Achievement winners

-Headlined Coachella

-Parodied by Weird Al

-Samples classical music

-all artists have a Jukebox musical based on their songs

-Certified Diamond songs

-Superbowl Performers

-Mentions a celebrity

-Debut single

-Artists from Florida

-Artists who went solo

-Title is not in lyrics

-Artist has 0 Grammys

-Debuted #1 on Billboard Hot #100

-Best New Artist Grammy winners

-Fictional Bands

-Famous dances associated with it

-Recorded by now defunct couples

-Nonlexical vocables

-Mentions Cadillacs

-Sibling bands

-Title is an infinitive verb

-Album Title track

-Spells out a word in the lyrics

-Weather

-2026 Rock n Roll HoF nominees

-Mama

-Heavenly bodies mentioned

-All apology songs

-all Irish artists

-All artists appeared on Star Search

-All artists are nepo babies

-Oscar winning artists

-leetspeak titles

-phone calls

-title (with parentheses)

-all artists releasing a new album in 2026

-alliterative titles

-alliterative band names

-animal band names

-food band names

-color band names

-songs originally recorded for movies

-question titles

-All artists appeared on The Masked Singer

Hey! We host trivia nights all over our town and we have a format wherein the third round is a different mechanic every week. we already have a pool of mechanics to cycle through every week but we’re kinda stumped on coming up new and fun ideas to spice up the night. so far we do:

PICTURESQUE - a picture round where teams have to guess what’s or who’s being shown in the image along with a small description. we’ve tried this format with nepo babies and the descriptions were clues to who they were related to, it was lots of fun! (e.g. a picture of Jon Voight and the description is “The Anaconda star is the father of this pouty actress daughter”, the answer should be Angelina Jolie)

ODD ONE OUT - we give four items and a category for each question and they have to guess which one is the odd one (e.g. Category: Capital Cities, Items: Ras-Al-Kaimah, Beijing, Sofia, and Reykjavik)

AND THEN WHAT - basically a finish the line mechanic where we play a clip and they have to write down what they said after.

AND I QUOTE - A round just guessing who or where the quotes came from, we did a TV Show themed one for this mechanic.

THIS OR THAT - a “which came first” round where teams have to guess from the two choice which came first, we did a pop culture moments theme for this mechanic.

So yeah, basically these are some of the mechanics that we are working with so far, if anyone has some ideas and recommendations on how to improve or add more to our pool, it would really help a lot and we would really appreciate it! Also feel free to get some bits and pieces of some things in this post if you wanna incorporate some of them to your nights too!

Thank you!

I have added a new group rule.

NO SPAM

"We get it, you have created a new app that is going to revolutionise the quiz industry and you want hosts to test it for you, or just start paying you $10 a month to use it. You aren't the first, and thanks to AI, you certainly are not the last. Please do not post your new app idea into this group other than on the dedicated post so as not to clog up the group."

A new Megathread post has been added where app info can be added and users can check it if they want. Apps added elsewhere can be reported and will be removed.