Creating good questions for the games IV -trivia questions and puzzles

In previous three posts we discussed how to create location based questions, creative team building tasks and making business facts fun. The final category is trivia questions. 

This is the category that is not necessarily connected to the event`s agenda. This is also tricky because most factual questions can be googled. A good idea is to add a timer to the general trivia question- this way a team does not have time to search the answer but have to make an educated guess : )

The questions used in games and not connected to the game location and  facts about the  team or the company, fall usually into three categories:

• General factual questions. These are something that anybody can find using online search or remember from what was learned at school.
  Example: How many teeth does an elephant have?
  
  Instead of asking  general factual questions, ask factual personal questions. “What is the name of John’s dog?”  would be an example of it. If you know the answer – good, if not, you need to find out. It works especially well in settings that are confined to smaller areas (like indoors) and with situations when you want to draw attention to somebody (like a new person within a team or somebody being promoted shortly).
  
  
• Logic questions or picture thinking puzzles. These are the questions that you cannot directly search online. You just need to figure out the answer like in IQ tests. But be really careful not to over-complicate- in a competitive situation people’s brain power might not be the top notch! While talking to game creators, many admit they have alternated most original game concepts to much easier ones when high % of test players got answers wrong or the puzzle took just too much time.
  That type of questions are a nice touch though as players are not able to look them up from online search or find from surroundings. Especially, if you take a puzzle idea and add your own numbers or words in it.
  
• Nonsense questions. You could actually put in a question and answers that make no sense. So the outcome is pure luck. It is good to raise mood and to add an element of luck into the game. One or two this type of questions make the game more surprising and encourages people not to take themselves too seriously. More than that, and you will make people probably angry.
  Example: Who performs best in the cooking pink carrots competition?

1. Wagabodee
2. Qulogeyoloo
3. Xerycheeoo

This is the last article in the series of how to write new questions. Hopefully, it inspired you to generate new ideas and you created based on the examples plenty of new questions for your games. What topic about creating games would you like to see  in the next Loquiz blog? Share in the comment below : )