Quizzing in Belgium
Encyclopedia
Quizzing in Belgium or Belgian Style Quizzing is the Belgian
variant of the British
Pub Quiz Nights
or Quiz Bowls
. The mind sport
has a long tradition in Belgian
(though, mostly Flemish
) culture and is a popular pastime. Similar to a Pub quiz
or a Quiz Bowl, it's a team competition in which the team that answers the most questions correctly wins the quiz
. Questions are mainly pure knowledge questions on all topics of human knowledge, such as history
, geography
, arts
& culture
, media
, literature
, film
, music
, theatre
, science
, nature
, sports etc... Due to some high level competitions, Belgian Style Quizzing has become internationally renowned for its difficult question setting.
quiz
format is not fixed and quiz organizations will try to be as inventive as possible to maximize the quizzing pleasure, a typical Belgian
Style quiz will go somewhat as follows:
A quiz
is played by 20-50 teams of 4-6 people each. It starts at 8pm and typically finishes around 12pm. A quiz is played in rounds of 10-15 questions each and features 140-180 questions in total. Most questions are read out loud, sometimes supported by handout
material and audio tracks, possibly video
material shown
on a projection screen
. Each team writes down their best and final answers on the provided answer sheets, which are collected at the end of each round. Typically, a round ends with a music track
and the last question will be 'name the artist', which provides some time to fill in the last blanks. These answer sheets are corrected by the jury, and subtotals are read out a couple of times as the evening progresses.
Plain rounds feature questions that are unrelated, but vary in covered topics. A 10-question round will feature e.g. one question each on history
, geography
, arts
and culture
, literature
, media
, sports, cinema
, science
, nature
, and music
.
Apart from these ‘plain’ rounds a wide range of 'special rounds' are played.
Some examples:
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
variant of the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Pub Quiz Nights
Pub quiz
A pub quiz is a quiz held in a public house. These events are also called Quiz Nights or Trivia Nights and may be held in other settings. Pub quizzes are still extremely popular and may attract people to a pub who are not found there on other days. The pub quiz is a modern example of a pub game...
or Quiz Bowls
Quizbowl
Quiz bowl is a family of games of questions and answers on all topics of human knowledge that is commonly played by students enrolled in high school or college, although some participants begin in middle or even elementary school...
. The mind sport
Mind sport
A Mind Sport is a sport or a game of skill where the mentalcomponent is much more significant than the physical. The official bodies that use the term have over 500 million registered users.- History of the term :...
has a long tradition in Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
(though, mostly Flemish
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
) culture and is a popular pastime. Similar to a Pub quiz
Pub quiz
A pub quiz is a quiz held in a public house. These events are also called Quiz Nights or Trivia Nights and may be held in other settings. Pub quizzes are still extremely popular and may attract people to a pub who are not found there on other days. The pub quiz is a modern example of a pub game...
or a Quiz Bowl, it's a team competition in which the team that answers the most questions correctly wins the quiz
Quiz
A quiz is a form of game or mind sport in which the players attempt to answer questions correctly. In some countries, a quiz is also a brief assessment used in education and similar fields to measure growth in knowledge, abilities, and/or skills.Quizzes are usually scored in points and many...
. Questions are mainly pure knowledge questions on all topics of human knowledge, such as history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, arts
ARts
aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....
& culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
, sports etc... Due to some high level competitions, Belgian Style Quizzing has become internationally renowned for its difficult question setting.
Belgian Quiz Format
Although the BelgianBelgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
quiz
Quiz
A quiz is a form of game or mind sport in which the players attempt to answer questions correctly. In some countries, a quiz is also a brief assessment used in education and similar fields to measure growth in knowledge, abilities, and/or skills.Quizzes are usually scored in points and many...
format is not fixed and quiz organizations will try to be as inventive as possible to maximize the quizzing pleasure, a typical Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
Style quiz will go somewhat as follows:
A quiz
Quiz
A quiz is a form of game or mind sport in which the players attempt to answer questions correctly. In some countries, a quiz is also a brief assessment used in education and similar fields to measure growth in knowledge, abilities, and/or skills.Quizzes are usually scored in points and many...
is played by 20-50 teams of 4-6 people each. It starts at 8pm and typically finishes around 12pm. A quiz is played in rounds of 10-15 questions each and features 140-180 questions in total. Most questions are read out loud, sometimes supported by handout
Handout
A handout is something given freely or distributed free. It can refer to materials handed out for presentation purposes or to a charitable gift, among other things.During the Great Depression, many people lived entirely on handouts of one kind or another...
material and audio tracks, possibly video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
material shown
Video projector
A video projector is an image projector that receives a video signal and projects the corresponding image on a projection screen using a lens system. All video projectors use a very bright light to project the image, and most modern ones can correct any curves, blurriness, and other...
on a projection screen
Projection screen
A projection screen is an installation consisting of a surface and a support structure used for displaying a projected image for the view of an audience. Projection screens may be permanently installed, as in a movie theater; painted on the wall; or semi-permanent or mobile, as in a conference room...
. Each team writes down their best and final answers on the provided answer sheets, which are collected at the end of each round. Typically, a round ends with a music track
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
and the last question will be 'name the artist', which provides some time to fill in the last blanks. These answer sheets are corrected by the jury, and subtotals are read out a couple of times as the evening progresses.
Plain rounds feature questions that are unrelated, but vary in covered topics. A 10-question round will feature e.g. one question each on history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, arts
ARts
aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....
and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, sports, cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
, and music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
.
Apart from these ‘plain’ rounds a wide range of 'special rounds' are played.
Some examples:
- ABC-rounds: 26 questions are asked, each answer starting with another letter of the alphabetAlphabetAn alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
. Questions are not necessarily put in the right order, i.e. the first answer is not always the one starting with A, etc. - Link rounds: every answer is also a world capital, or part of each answer is an animalAnimalAnimals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
or colorColorColor or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
(inventive quiz teams will come up with more interesting, or amusing links) - AcrosticAcrosticAn acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous...
round: The first or last letters of the correct answers in this round form an acrosticAcrosticAn acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous... - Theme round: every question is linked to a certain theme, e.g. a historical figure
- Super rounds: A special final round at the end of the quiz, often more difficult than the rest of the quiz: In each covered topic, 3 questions are asked: The A-question is easy (1 point), the B-question is harder (2 points) and the C-question is very hard (3 points). Teams will have to choose which question they answer, and will receive the corresponding number of points.
Quiz Venues
- Fund raisingFundraisingFundraising or fund raising is the process of soliciting and gathering voluntary contributions as money or other resources, by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies...
quizzes, organized by local sports teams, schools etc..., are typically held in cafeteriaCafeteriaA cafeteria is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school; a school dining location is also referred to as a dining hall or canteen...
s or a larger indoor sport arenaArenaAn arena is an enclosed area, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theater, musical performances, or sporting events. It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectators. The key feature of an arena is that the event space is the...
available to them. To attract a large number of quiz teams, questions are rather easy and focus on media eventMedia EventA media event, as loosely defined by evolving modern usage, is an occasion or happening, spontaneous or planned, that attracts prominent coverage by mass media organizations, particularly television news and newspapers in both print and Internet editions....
s, celebritiesCelebrityA celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
, etc... Teams competing for victory will typically have scores of +95%. - Quizzes organized by quiz teams are usually held in community centreCommunity centreCommunity centres or community centers or jumping recreation centers are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole community or for a specialised group within...
s, which can be easily rented for a small fee. Difficulty levels vary, but focus will shift to more encyclopedic knowledgeEncyclopediaAn encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
, and scores are much lower than the larger quiz events. Some of the highest level quizzes are considered to be the most difficult quizzes in the worldWorldWorld is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth....
.
Question setting
It's not difficult to come up with questions that are hard, or nearly impossible to answer. The key to the success of Belgian style quizzing is the ability of a lot of organizing teams to come up with a set of questions that are both interesting, amusing and solvable at the same time (at least by a few people in the room). Generally, the goal is to have the winning team score around 90%, while the last teams still score 50%. Teams are warned in advance on the difficulty level.Trivia
Quizzes that feature more than a few questions on controversial, sordid, or adult topics are sometimes referred to as 'Belgian Style Quizzing', due to the supposed popularity of these topics in Belgian quizzes. However, although some Belgian quizzes indeed include a few of these questions, Belgian quizzers claim the image has surpassed reality.External links
- World Quizzing ChampionshipWorld Quizzing ChampionshipThe World Quizzing Championship is an individual quiz contest organised by the International Quizzing Association...
- IQA Belgium with full results previous World and European Championships
- IQA Great Britain
- IQA United States
- SQON/IQA Netherlands
- IQA Norway - all WQC results