Foreword for the KQA school quiz book

Ochintya Sharma
June 2008

Last year, just after the anniversary events, Arul Mani had come to my house and we got
discussing about what should be the most important charter for the KQA. As we talked
about many things, one theme came out to be the most dominant: what can the KQA do
for school children. It is very evident that school children all over the country are getting
increasingly interested in quizzing. Prompted by eager parents and by the gloss and glitter
of celebrity game shows on Television, school children wanting to quiz are more hungry
than before. We at the KQA have always been organizing quizzes for school children
ever since our inception. We felt that is important for us to incubate and foster this
younger generation of quizzers in a more meaningful and concerted manner. Organizing a
school quiz is just one small bit. The canvas needs to be much wider. It is essential that
the seniors in the quizzing community give the youngsters the right set of opportunities,
the proper direction and guidance and loads of encouragement. This is a simple but a
powerful way to give back, for all the fun that we have had, through our years of
competitive quizzing. To take this idea forward, the KQA has started conducting quiz
workshops where enthusiastic school children get an opportunity to interact with
seasoned quizzers, appreciate the process of conducting a quiz and understand related
skills. Although we have made the first strides, we need to take this endeavour further
with more vigour.
Youngsters often ask me How do we go about setting a good quiz?. This is a very
difficult question and I am sure that every quizmaster has his or her view to share. I have
thought about it myself many times. In fact, it is the most dominant question on my mind
the evening prior to conducting a quiz event. All these years of attending quizzes: lively
or boring, general or special, have taught me a simple mantra. I call them the 3 Bs. Now
let me explain to you what these 3 Bs are all about.
The first B is Breadth. Any quiz, even if on a single topic, like Science or Business,
should strive to cover as many different areas as possible. A good example of Breadth is
Bill Brysons A short history of nearly everything. Most popular books on history of
science cover the usual stuff: relativity, quantum physics, periodic table, the double helix
and likes. What is amazing in Brysons book is the range; the usual stuff is surely there
but then he talks about ocean vents, paleobotany, geological ages, asteroid orbits: very
diverse topics and yet all of them have been weaved together to make the book compact
and extremely readable. So when you design a quiz, think not what you like about the
topic and constrain the quiz with your own prejudices but how rich and diverse you can
make the questions. Bringing in variety in questions is an art and the more quizzes you
set, the more richness you can bring into your questions.
The second B is Balance. It is not enough to ask questions on interesting topics. It is
important that there is equal and equitable distribution of questions across the different

areas. Let us say you are conducting a quiz on sports. You may be very interested in
Rugby. But imagine the plight of the participants if half of your questions are on Rugby,
even if they cover the Breadth of all the Rugby playing nations of the world. Balance has
other dimensions as well. You should strive to ensure that all the questions have the same
degree of difficulty. A written quiz or a buzzer round where all the participants get to
answer at the same time is a little forgiving on this front. But when questions are passed
from team to team, you cannot have some questions which are extremely esoteric and
then some extremely easy in a very random manner. You should strive for balance when
it comes to questions on India vis--vis rest of the world, current affairs and general
interest, plain text vis--vis audio-visual questions. A simple histogram analysis or
ranking questions across an XL sheet should be able to help you in achieving this
balance. Most seasoned quizmasters spend considerable time in trying to achieve a fair
balance in their quizzes and these quizzes are very pleasurable to attend as well as to
participate.
The third B is Beauty. If the other two Bs are to do with art and science, this B is from
the realms of philosophy. There is no formula for a beautiful question. Think of a recipe
for a good question: take an assortment of facts, add a ring of familiarity, a hint of
mischief, a bait to mislead and garnish with flashy presentation. Unfortunately, although
you may have all these ingredients, there is no guarantee that the question will click.
A good question comes out through a creative process of understanding a fact or a set of
facts, relating it to something possibly unknown to the participant and crafting words,
images or sounds to beguile another intelligent person. A quizmaster should always put
on the shoes of the participant while setting the questions. When a question is asked and
the answer is out, participants should get a feeling of Wow. The participants should be
asking themselves, How come I did not know this? or How come I did not think about
this myself? or something to that effect. One simple way of framing a question with
beauty is one that is workoutable. My favourite example is this: What was invented by
Charlie Cretors in 1885, which became well-known only after movie-watching became
popular? Although most people would not know about this fact to begin with, with the
clue of movie-watching in there, answering popcorn machine is not all together
difficult. The other tip I can share with you on making a question with beauty is that
either the answer or the question should be familiar. These days, there are plenty of
questions which require participants to connect seemingly disparate pieces of
information. These questions tend to be very creative and break the monotony of vanilla
What is? questions. Interesting rounds like, LVC (Long Visual Connect), Stage 2,
Cleopatra etc. also makes a quiz much more colourful.
This quiz book is specially brought out for school children. To commemorate the 25th
year of The Karnataka Quiz Association, 25 well known quiz masters associated with the
KQA have contributed 25 questions each on 25 different topics. I believe we have been
able to achieve breadth and balance. As for beauty, it is for you readers to tell us what you
think. Thanks for all the encouragement that you have shown over the years. We need
more for many years to come.