Trivia Themes Which Nobody Likes: A List of Failed Trivia Rounds
Following up on yesterday’s post highlighting 5 trivia themes proven to bring smiles to people’s faces, I thought today we would explore the flipside: live trivia party themes which are surefire flops.
As discussed yesterday, I’ve been writing & hosting live trivia events for 5 years, and in that time have experimented an awful lot with trivia questions and themes. I’ve managed to develop a strong sense of what people respond to, but also what does not resonate well for live trivia. On the one hand, I enjoy being creative, and pride myself on coming up with rounds which are unique, fun and different; on the other hand, though, if the rounds don’t soar with the audience, well- they tend to sink like rocks.
Below is a list of my all-time greatest trivia theme flops, in no particular order:
1) Funky Sounding Colors Round – I announced colors with weird names, and teams had to name the family of more familiar colors which they belonged to (ex: “chartreuse” is a mix of green & yellow). This was the most stale, boring and uninspired round I’ve ever done, people were booing halfway through. Ouch.
2) Awareness Ribbons Round – Like the colors round above, only I’d give a ribbon color, and the audience named the cause the ribbon was associated with (ex: pink = breast cancer awareness). Not only was this incredibly dull, but there were multiple causes for each color (do you have ANY idea how many causes use blue ribbons??)
3) Weird Beards Round – Early on in my pub quiz days, I thought it would be fun to describe weird people who have beards [ex: “This person lives in isolation, but breaks into people’s homes once a year.” (Santa Clause)]. What the heck was I thinking?
4) Pie Round – I thought this was clever, since I love pie (any baked goods, really, but pies especially). Asked questions about sweet & savory pies, ethnic pies, ingredients, shapes etc. Total flop. People don’t care about pie. I was crushed.
5) 2008 Year in Review Round – Sounds innocent enough, only I did it at a bar on like, January 3rd, 2008. I thought it was pretty clever- turns out, not so much. It could have been called the “extreme current events round,” and I still would’ve gotten booed back to the stone age.
6) Band Hometowns Round – I name the band, you tell me their hometown. Guess what? Not only do people not know where bands come from, but they will argue your Wikipedia-backed answers to death. Epic fail.
7) YouTube Viral Videos Round – So it turns out, people don’t know anything about viral videos beyond the basic premise. Once you start asking about character’s names, view counts, quotes and such, the crowd turns on you like a pack of killer whales on a freshly-wounded sea lion. Beyond bad idea.
8) Math Round – Terrible.
Believe me, there are more. These are just the ones which stick out in my mind as being particularly ill-received; there’s nothing like having upwards of 150 strangers booing you to remind you not to ever, ever offer that round again. If you’re a fellow quizmaster, hopefully I’ve spared you similar shame; for trivia enthusiasts and HR managers looking to book a private trivia party for your company, don’t worry- you will never be subjected to these rounds, I guarantee it.
What experience do you have with horrible trivia rounds? Leave them below, so we can know to avoid as well!
I’ve had 2 categories completely flop –
1) Mnemonics, a round where I gave a mnemonic device (like “HOMES” for the Great Lakes) and the teams had to provide what the device referenced
2) Celebrity Tweets, which wasn’t a horrible premise but it wasn’t right for the audience.
Wow- those sound like clunkers indeed…! Thanks for sharing
I did the same this with the Mnemonics. Even our champion team struggled!
Truly nothing as disheartening as a failed trivia round – Mnemonics sounds particularly cringe-worthy!
Band Hometowns Round: I did that a couple weeks ago at my gig and had the exact same problem. Wish I read this site first!
Ha! Sorry you had to endure that grief as well – hopefully you’ll avoid any of the other above clunkers at your trivia nights!
This article was awesome. It gave me a good chuckle. I host several Pub Trivia nights in Champaign, IL. (Home to the University of Illinois, though I do not attend) I feel your pain on the failed rounds. I too get crushed sometimes when my ideas go over like a holocaust joke in southern Florida.
Glad you enjoyed- and that you feel my pain…! Please feel free to share, I hope to spare other quizmasters the grief…
I think the worst round I’ve done was an Indie Music audio round. Turns out indie means “No one likes you or knows your band name.” I guess some stuff is indie for a reason.
Yikes- that DOES sound like a clunker!
Late to the party, like the website…
I’ve hosted a pub triv night for 15 yrs, and just started doing specialty rounds. Believe it or not, the worst-received round I made was about ESPN. And it was at a sports bar. A cop there told me that if I ever made another round like that again, he was writing me a ticket. Owch.
I also have a round on mnemonics set for later this year. Good thing I read the comments.
Also, wanna turn a pub trivia crowd against you? In a word, Shakespeare.
Mike- that’s incredible! If there’s 1 thing I’m hounded about at pub quiz, it’s that there aren’t enough sports questions/sports rounds. What made your ESPN round poorly received?
I think what happened was that I inadvertently introduced them to the fact that there was a whole, wide, wonderful (?) ESPN world other than SportsCenter and MNF, ie Bodyshaping, SportNation, Mike and Mike, ESPN Classic, original ESPN movies, and such. They just weren’t ready for it.
Yeah, that’s a bit rough- will be sure to avoid!
Don’t do anything that involves putting a group of things in order. its a nightmare.
Oh my god – AGREED!
Thanks for the list. I have a few themed trivia nights, that you could add… “Sleep” Trivia, went much like the theme would indicate. “Children’s Songs, Stories & Nursery Rhymes” was a disaster, as well. I thought it would make everyone feel nostalgic, for their childhoods, but it just made them realize that their childhoods were not as happy as they could have been.
“Sleep” I can understand, however “Children’s Songs, Etc.” should’ve been a hit! I’ve done things like this in the past, and it taps into those great nostalgic memories which people generally love – however, it’s also got to be the right crowd for it. Guess it’s a crap shoot!
Every once in a while, I throw out a “this should be stupidly easy to do, but people will think I’m clever for putting it together” round.
Those are the rounds, if you couldn’t guess, are the ones where I think I’m clever for putting it together, discounting the fact that people do not go to trivia for me, no matter how dumb the idea or how easy the questions will be.
That round for me was “Rhymes with Shaft,” wherein I wrote every question like it’s a line in the theme from “Shaft” by Isaac Hayes, and, sure enough, every answer was a word that rhymes with ‘Shaft.’
Apparently, me trying to announce the questions in the form of a song is too distracting for the actual question to be understood was a bad thing. And it’s amazing when, say, “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” makes it look like child’s play!
Thanks Dave for contributing – no shame in showing off how clever you are now and then, so long as the audience enjoys it! Keep it up…!