New here (and a former question-writer)

lowlife · Post by **lowlife** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 2:37 am

Hello, good to find this forum.

I haven't trawled it much yet, but can I assume that the pro approach involves memorising the questions of a particular game? After a couple of years of using memory techniques I've only just realised their value on quizzes - what a prat.

In my defence, this is partly because I've been living in the US for the last couple of years, where the evil, dangerous idea of people playing a game of skill for a little money in a bar is of course illegal.

Anyway, I wrote a number of the questions for one game a few years ago and wonder if anyone would be interested in the process. For all I know this place is packed with quiz machine question writers so I don't like to assume.

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:08 am

lowlife wrote:Hello, good to find this forum.

I haven't trawled it much yet, but can I assume that the pro approach involves memorising the questions of a particular game? After a couple of years of using memory techniques I've only just realised their value on quizzes - what a prat.

In my defence, this is partly because I've been living in the US for the last couple of years, where the evil, dangerous idea of people playing a game of skill for a little money in a bar is of course illegal.

Anyway, I wrote a number of the questions for one game a few years ago and wonder if anyone would be interested in the process. For all I know this place is packed with quiz machine question writers so I don't like to assume.

Welcome lowlife (as it were!)

I suspect the techniques used by members of the forum differ. I suspect that the very best players on here will concentrate on particular games (or sets of games sharing question banks) and focus on learning those question sets exhaustively. How they do that must, I guess, remain a bit of a trade secret - but my suspicion would be naturally superb memory skills allied by use of memory techniques of the kind you allude to.

Personally I don't use memory techniques as such, other than simply trying hard to remember questions I get wrong. Combined with a good general knowledge (I do *a lot* of quiz-related things), that gives me a big advantage over most players, but I'm nowhere near the league of some of the very best, and suspect I'd need to change a lot of my playing habits to achieve that.

I think I speak for all members of the forum when I say I'd welcome your insight into the question-writing process. Which game were you involved in? What percentage of the questions for that game did you write? Were you given any specific instructions as to how to go about writing those questions?

lowlife · Post by **lowlife** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:51 pm

Cheers for the reply.

I wrote questions for the 'Pepsi Chart Show' game (that may not be its exact title, I forget). A reasonable game if you like pop music I think.

Somewhat chance events led to me getting asked to write questions for it, based upon a betting column I briefly wrote on the now long-defunct zoofootball website. Or was it 'zoobet'?This was all in about 2002.

I was hired to write 1500 questions based around a particular set of music artists. I was told what percentage of the total this represented, but I'm afraid I forget. I think it was perhaps about 10%, but having said that I can tell you that in playing the machine quite frequently - as you would imagine - I very rarely saw one of my own questions, which was a real bummer!

I was given some guidelines, with an encouragement to include some funny answers among the options for each question.

There were 4 difficulty levels required, with the hardest being called 'gamebreakers' and intended to be all but impossible for someone to know.

Every question had to be accurately referenced to a page of an encyclopaedia of pop music that I was sent gratis, or to another source (which included the net).

I received a few hundred quid for this. It seemed like a decent rate of pay when it was offered, but the writing took a lot longer than I anticipated...

wires74 · Post by **wires74** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:11 pm

welcome lowlife very interesting to read your comments

Istenem · Post by **Istenem** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:36 pm

i'll agree with that. there is a certain pleasure in seeing an amusing wrong answer, at the moment i enjoy the river jockstopper for hadrian's wall. before that i enjoyed billie piper's middle name.
but interesting to have you on board (ahem) LL. stick around, we are nice people (apart from watergate who behaves like an imbecile.)

i'd imagine most of the people on here have a background in quizzing of some description and a good quiz done well is a joy, a mispronounced redtooth debacle is an embarrassment.

i'd prefer to crap out on a question about the blonde prisoner's number in batman (35-23-34 (HARGH! HARGH!)) than the year somebody i never will care about died.

Cardinal Sin · Post by **Cardinal Sin** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:41 pm

It's always surprised me that nobody that no question writers have posted here before (unless I've missed them). You would have thought that the pastimes / professions of creating and answering questions would be closely related.

Still, welcome aboard all the same.

rogerthymes · Post by **rogerthymes** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:40 pm

Glad you got a few hundred quid out of it...some of us here got a lot more! :P

lowlife · Post by **lowlife** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:19 am

OK, I've now read around the forum enough to know that Pepsi Chart Challenge was a pretty well-regarded game. It gives me a warm glow to know that I was part of that game. I must admit, I enjoyed playing it and continued to do so long after I had found that I rarely got one of my own questions.

And yes, I got my own questions wrong once or twice - d'oh.

I have a horrible feeling I was responsible for the much-maligned horoscope questions, by the way. I definitely used that for a lot of my 'gamebreaker' questions - trust me, when you've stared at an artiste's bio and discography long enough trying to think of a new angle, their birthday does jump out at you!

In my defence, I'd say that would be one of the easier things to memorise in case you got it again - you just picture Michael Jackson as a scorpion/lion/set of scales whatever

I'd love to hear of any other particularly weird/funny/annoying q's people can remember from that machine and recall whether they were mine...

Anyway, I have a trip home to England coming up and I will be putting a lot of pound coins into slots. I see moderator Matt is from the town where I'll be doing it - come on you U's!

Matt Vinyl · Post by **Matt Vinyl** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 10:07 am

gamebreaker

A much better term than 'spoiler', which is the oft-used expression here. I'll adopt it from now on!

Welcome to the forum, it is indeed a reasonable place to virtually hang out. Looking forward to your comments!

ggdr · Post by **ggdr** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:29 am

I'd be quite interested to know some of the funny/clever answers you've responsible for lowlife. Some ones I've enjoyed lately have been:

Which of these has nothing to do with Microsoft?
a. Windows b. Gates c. Doors

How many of the Spice Girls have spicy nicknames?

...and I do remember laughing out loud when I was playing Weakest Link (possibly) once and was given "finish the name of the TV programme: Who Wants to be a..."

One of the options was 'twat'.

foxy · Post by **foxy** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 1:20 am

Welcome LL and many many thanks.You unwittingly contributed to my moniker on here and for that I'm grateful.
Anyway bit of a long shot this but here goes..
I always played foxy with my pal steven and in our countless thousands of games we got asked one particular question a grand total of once the answer to which was , I think, the secret vampire soundtrack by bis.Now this really stood out for 2 reasons.
1.we only saw this question once.we must have seen every other question god knows how many times
2.steven wrote the songs in question
to this day i have accused him of some grand conspiracy theory so to get to the point - was this one of your questions?!!

lowlife · Post by **lowlife** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 2:30 am

'fraid not, sorry. I was given a number of artistes and all my questions were about them. It was a mixed bag. I can't remember them all but they included B*Witched (ugh!), Eminem, Shakira, Madonna I think. Damn it's been so long I've forgotten most of them.

rogerthymes · Post by **rogerthymes** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 10:31 pm

Interesting re: starsigns as for some bizarre reason one multiple choice question had Samantha Mumba down as a capricorn but occasionally there was another that had her as a pisces!
there's a way of working out the answer from the phrasing of the question but off the top of my head I can't remember it..

Oh, and I hope you weren't responsible for the Randy Prawnfish answer?

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 12:06 pm

rogerthymes wrote:Oh, and I hope you weren't responsible for the Randy Prawnfish answer?

Mr Picky writes:

Surely you mean "Randy Crawfish and Prawn Ryder" and in addition it was a 100 point answer on WWTBAM rather than on the Pepsi Music game.

I know, ... "Get a Life!"

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:52 am

Nil Satis wrote:
rogerthymes wrote:Oh, and I hope you weren't responsible for the Randy Prawnfish answer?
Mr Picky writes:

Surely you mean "Randy Crawfish and Prawn Ryder" and in addition it was a 100 point answer on WWTBAM rather than on the Pepsi Music game.

I know, ... "Get a Life!"

I was just about to say the same thing NS. There was also "Krusty the Soapdodger" wasn't there?

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New here (and a former question-writer)

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