FAQ

Qwizard creates your quiz using our web-based application and sends it to subscribers electronically. We have a number of quiz formats to choose from, and also offer the opportunity to customise the quiz. Subscribers will access the quiz from the Qwizard mobile app, and present it from their mobile device or tablet to their big screen, using casting technology. Each team is registered and scored within the programme so that the players can experience integrated results throughout the quiz event. Email communications are automatically sent out to share the quiz results with the teams immediately after the event. The team results, and aggregate results, are also immediately available on our website for teams to review their performance.

Because of its web-based format the Qwizard platform allows you to add your logo to the quiz, or to insert your own adverts (or your sponsors adverts) during your quiz event. We provide some help to set up and insert your material so that you can benefit from them. We also allow one-off quiz events to have some input into the structure, format, and difficulty of the questions to suit their requirements. For a regular quiz event the questions will typically be standardised so that players can best compare their performance against others, on any given night.

Our quiz material is all categorised and classified. This assists us with determining the subject matter for each quiz, and ensuring that we have the strongest possible variety of subject matter within each quiz. Our regular quiz of 8 rounds involves 6 rounds of our major subject categories, with the remaining two rounds being reserved for more general subject material. This co-ordinated approach ensures that we achieve the maximum amount of variability in the subject material.

Because we are recording all results against each quiz we have a precise understanding of what level of scores have been achieved. Additionally, we have the ability to collect regular feedback about the degree of difficulty for every quiz. This allows us to constantly adjust our quizzes in response to market feedback. We can then modify our quizzes weekly to reflect market demand in terms of difficulty.

We would describe a Qwizard event to be more traditional and general is its question mix. Teams will tend to perform better. Our delivery methods allow us to supply more contemporary or current questions. So we would summarise our content as; more topical or current affairs-related, more general knowledge and less specific, more NZ-based questions, broader and more balanced in terms of variety, and more predictable. Of course, one team wants more History and one team wants less History – and feedback will tend towards the negative. But by seeing the results we are very adaptive. If scores on Sports questions are poor, then we may make them easier, or may slightly reduce the influence of Sports questions.

All of the Qwizard questions are classified according to 6 primary subject categories; Business & Politics, Entertainment & Art, Geography, History, Science & Nature and Sport. Generally, these categories are self-explanatory – but there are some more contentious topics. For example, topics such as Religion and Maths fall into our Science & Nature category. Remember that every standard 8-round quiz that we produce will include a round on each of these 6 categories plus 2 general or sundry rounds. Overall, we attempt to get an approximately even mix of questions from each category, but will adjust the balance in our 2 general rounds according to results and feedback.

Our objective is to place more emphasis on results, and visibility on a team’s performance during an event. We put a lot of focus on teams knowing how they perform – not just on the night but over time, and down to a very granulated level. Joker rounds, where double the points are awarded in a particular round, create a distortion in the results. We wanted to create clear visibility for teams about how they are performing at each event and create an environment where the best teams can win an event – as opposed to a team that succeeded in playing their joker round more successfully. Additionally, by having a clear, linear progression of results our events have proven to create a more dynamic and competitively fun event.

Our Crossword provides something that can be worked on throughout a Qwizard quiz event, whilst – by marking each question separately – providing a more even distribution of results. It allows teams to consider their Crossword answers during the evening, but only hand in the answer sheet after the final round. This improves the turnaround for answer sheets. For a standard 8 round event the crossword will be marked out of 8 points and added into your overall total. Therefore, each of the 8 answers submitted will be answered individually.

We are constantly collating and analysing a high volume of data from all of our quiz results. This analysis will be used to find interesting and meaningful facts. Some of the more relevant analysed data will be regularly shared in the form of Qwizard Insights. Your team will have the ability to use the data to assist you with improving your team performances, or can be simply viewed as interesting feedback about overall quiz performances.

Your scores at pub quizzes don’t tell the full story, since they don’t factor in the different sizes of teams. So we have introduced a Ranking system that scales team scores according to team sizes. Therefore, a small team of 3 people will receive a weighting to adjust their score toward the average team size, while a large team of 8 will have a weighting that reduces their score. The weightings that are applied to small and large teams will be mathematically calculated from our results data and regularly reviewed. In doing so, we can predict what sort of premium score a large team of 8 players may be – on average – expected to achieve compared to a team with an average number of players. This algorithm gives Qwizard the ability to accurately compare teams of different sizes.

Our Breaker Question will be posed at our typical quiz just before the drinks break. It will require a numerical answer only, and is intended to be used as both a Drinks Break teaser, but also as our Tie Breaker question – just in case teams are tied at the end of the quiz. Teams must submit their numerical answer with their scoresheet for the following round (generally round 5 in our typical 8 round event). The Qwizard system will record your team result, and in the event of your team being tied with another team at the end of the quiz, Qwizard will automatically rank teams according to their answer to the Breaker Question – with the closest to the correct answer ranking above other results. So the smallest absolute difference between the team answer and the correct answer will elevate a tied team.

By providing your email address we will supply you with an automatic feedback on how you performed in a particular quiz event. If you click on the link you can access a private team results page. This Dashboard will provide you with historical results from every Qwizard event that your team has participated in. It will also analyse your average results – overall and in each subject category. You can easily see your best subject, and your worse subject. Your team rankings will also become available, and we will be adding additional performance data about particular topics that your team is good at. You can invite other team members to access the Dashboard and review the results also. So if one of your team mates missed the weekly quiz, they can review the quiz and how their team performed on their Dashboard. 

Every regular Qwizard event will have five, six or even seven ‘current questions’ in it. These are topical, hot-off-the-press questions from the last few days. They are identified with a Current Question logo. At least two of these questions (sometimes three) will relate to the three topics that Qwizard posts on its Facebook page each Monday, at about lunchtime. This is called the ‘Current Questions Guide’. So if you get six Current Questions in a particular quiz, two will relate to the guide provided on Monday. 

Some regular Qwizard venues run a shorter quiz that is 6 rounds long (as opposed to our standard format of 8 rounds and a crossword). Whilst the content of our regular 8-round quiz is quite regular and balanced, the 6-round quiz is slightly more targetted. The venues who choose to run this quiz usually have a smaller market, with more casual or transient teams and maybe a younger demographic. The quiz typically runs about 90 minutes or so. These venues and their teams do not qualify for our annual Winter League promotion. 

Alongside our regular leaderboard, which automatically updates after every quiz, Qwizard has introduced the capability to provide a customised leaderboard for a particular group of venues. These usually track teams over the course of each month but can be tailored for other periods. The group leaderboards create some fun rivalry between teams and among the venues. Qwizard can share these tables with the venues in various ways. For venues, the leaderboards can be used to identify and acknowledge their top-performing teams or reward their loyal teams over the course of each month.