Pub Quiz

Can be combined with: Spaghetti Dinner or Restaurant Night

This is something that’s way more popular in the United Kingdom than in the United States — but that’s no reason why you can't successfully use it for a fundraiser! Overseas, they have “pub quizzes” every week, which is when neighborhood pubs host trivia competitions where teams can compete for prizes. You can easily make a pub quiz part of an existing dinner event with guests paying $5-10 each to compete for the chance to win! Or if you have a local pub, coffee shop, or restaurant in your neighborhood that would be interested in a non-monetary sponsorship, you could ask them if they'd be willing to host a pub quiz for their clientele. This tends to go over particularly well with younger clientele (ages 18-35) who will really get behind something like Harry Potter Trivia Night or Game of Thrones Trivia Night. You might even be able to make it an ongoing event if it's successful and really maximize your profits!

You can find free pub quiz questions online at the following websites:
Free Pub Quiz Questions
Challenge the Brain
Pub Quiz Question HQ
Paul’s Quiz

You want to vet these questions carefully and look for ones that your guests might actually know because a lot of these questions are very British! So, for instance, your guests might not know that the name of the pub in long-running BBC soap opera Coronation Street is The Rovers Return, but they will probably know that Han Solo and Luke Skywalker first met at the Mos Eisley Cantina (or at least anyone deserving of points in the Film and TV category will know that!). Or you can always just make your own trivia questions that are specific to your interests or your specific area!

For a pub quiz, every group receives answer sheets where they write in their team name at the top and their answer below. So if the emcee asks a question like “FC Liverpool soccer team’s signature song ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ comes from which musical?”, teams would write in their answer (Carousel), and one representative from each team would bring the answer sheet over to the emcee. The emcee then reads the answer from each team and announces the correct one, awarding points to whichever teams got the answer correct. (It’s great if you can find an emcee with a solid sense of humor because some of the answers are bound to be hilarious.) We recommend having 8-10 questions in your pub quiz. There’s also usually a song lyric or picture round. During this round, you pass out a worksheet face-down, set a timer for two minutes, and then have the teams flip them over and fill in as many answers as they can.

The picture round worksheet might look something like this:



Or for a song lyric round, you might get a worksheet that says:

Which songs do the following lyrics come from?

1. “She played the fiddle in an Irish band, but she fell in love with an English man.”
2. “This hit, that ice cold, Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold.”
3. “They’re out to get you. Better leave while you can. Don’t wanna be a boy, you wanna be a man.”
4. “And it’s just like the ocean under the moon. Oh, it’s the same as the emotion that I get from you.”
5. “You know I’m just a fool who’s willing to sit around and wait for you.”
6. “Remember to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better.”

Or:

Don’t give us the name of the song/artist. We want the next line.

1. “Near, far, wherever you are, I believe that the heart does go on . . .” (The next 6 words are?)
2. “ remember when rock was young. Me and Suzie had so much fun . . .” (The next 6 words are?)
3. “She was more like a beauty queen from a movie’s scene . . .” (The next 13 words are?)
4. “I’m feeling sexy and free, like glitter’s raining on me . . .” (The next 7 words are?)
5. “Oh Daddy dear, you know you’re still number one . . .” (The next 6 words are?)

At the end of the night, give out donated prizes from your sponsors to the winners. Or, if you don’t have any donated prizes, then make some DIY crafty project. Like have a giant over-the-top ceremony where you play Queen’s “We are the Champions” and crown each one of your winners with a flimsy DIY paper crown, while the rest of the guests bow from their seats saying “We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!” The pub quiz is always more about the respect that you get from winning, then what you take home at the end of the night.