Team Quizzing

By Donald Yule, Hon President, The Quiz League of London

Team Quizzing is what it says it is - it's teams playing in a quiz! It's been around a long time too, formally since the 1950's (what were YOU playing then? and it was probably inspired by the quizzes played to keep the chaps in the Services happy during and after the Second World War.

Seriously though -

Team Quizzing is a Mind Sport played between two teams of four persons with INDIVIDUAL players on each team asked questions in turn. A match consists of a total of 64 questions so you can work out that each player will have 8 questions directed at them. A round ends when each player has been asked a question and arithmetic again dictates that a match consists of 8 rounds.

Players arrange themselves in an order from 1 to 4, usually on either side of a table and the business of deciding which team's Number 1 gets the first question depends upon the environment. In a competition where there are home & away games, then the visiting side has the choice of going first or second. In a Cup or friendly, the choice is determined by the toss of a coin. In either case, the order of asking will change at the halfway point. A game lasts for about 25 minutes, but what's it like?

Well - did you catch the word "individual"?

This is what differentiates our game from "pub quizzing" - a commercial derivative. You're on your own! Like being under a high catch out on the boundary in a cricket match, your team can will you to succeed but they can do nothing about it.

The equivalent of holding the catch, I suppose, is giving a correct answer- inside the ten seconds allowed for thought -for that will score you a couple of points in your contribution to your team's total. Staying with the analogy, dropping the catch would be giving the wrong answer whereupon a player from the opposition can give the right one, scoring one point for them. An option that must be rare on the cricket field is available, however, as the player given the task can ask the team captain to pass it to someone else on the team who can score one point with the correct answer.

So, given that we have no conferring by word, pen or electronic means - we have a game where players routinely have to decide, very quickly, exactly how strong is their recollection of a fact. If I want to sum up our game, I can do no better than by quoting Magnus Magnusson, writing about a television entertainment with which he was closely connected for many years: "It is about knowledge and nerve, about memory and instant recall. It is about the ability to retrieve information swiftly and surely from that marvellous computer we all carry in our heads. It is about competitiveness and the capacity to rise to the occasion, to perform at one's best under pressure."

It's tough but it's a lot of fun and you make a lot of friends. If you haven't tried it yet, give it a go. Contact us.

Copies of the Rules of Team Quizzing can be obtained from the Hon Secretary of the Quiz League of London.