Unique Pub Quiz Round Ideas

Hosting a regular quiz night is a great way to get people into your pub; however, when the rounds are constantly the same, it can start to become a bit tedious for some teams. 

 

Finding new and unique quiz rounds can be tricky, which is why at Quiz on Demand, we outlined our favourite uncommon quiz rounds (including some of our very own!).

Quizzes featured in this guide

 

Most popular quiz round ideas

There are hundreds of quiz rounds that you could choose from when you’re making a quiz; however, some are definitely more popular than others. Listed below are some of the most popular, and most common quiz round ideas. 

 

Name the Song 

One of the most popular quiz rounds is a music round, and it’s easy to understand why since everyone loves music. An easy way to do this round is by playing certain songs and having your participants guess the song and artist. 

 

You can pick specific themes for this round, such as love songs, Disney soundtracks, Halloween themed and so on, the list is endless. 

 

Sports Rounds 

Again, like music, a sports round is one of the most popular quiz round ideas. There are hundreds of different sports played across the globe, not just the most popular ones like Football or Rugby, which makes it a great round for sports fanatics to test their knowledge. 

 

Generally speaking, a sports round is great for quiz teams as there is likely always going to be one person on the team who loves sports. 

 

TV and Film

No matter who is on your team, there are bound to be one or more who love a TV and film round. Film buffs often look forward to entertainment rounds as it is a great excuse for them to put their obscure knowledge to the test. 

 

This round can be made into a variety of different formats, such as what happens next, who spoke what line, questions about characters and actors and so on. 

 

General Knowledge

Of course, one of the most common rounds is the general knowledge round. This round is great for throwing a variety of different pot luck questions out there, including sport, TV and multiple choice questions.

 

A lot of people enjoy general knowledge questions as it can throw in a curveball,  either causing the team to increase their overall score or potentially causing big trouble!

 

Picture Rounds

Picture rounds are really simple rounds, which is what makes them so popular amongst quiz hosts and quiz goers. 

 

They are so easy to play, especially with Quiz on Demand. Many of our quiz packages come with a picture round, or you can buy and download our Face Race quiz package. Our quizzes make running a pub quiz night so much simpler – no spending time sourcing images and creating sheets, just download and print what you need!

 

The pictures are also licensed for use and the most Google-proof, meaning your teams can’t take a sneaky snap and expect Google to give them the answer.

 

Weekly Quiz

At Quiz on Demand, we do a ‘weekly Quiz In Round’ whereby our Q&A’s are all up to date for that week, meaning that you can always have fresh content that tests your contestant’s current knowledge!

 

Alternative quiz round ideas

Although the quiz rounds listed above are really popular and tend to be a fan favourite, there are other alternative rounds that you could introduce in order to switch up your pub quiz night. 

 

Take a look at some of our favourite alternative quiz rounds below to inspire your next quiz night – some of them, you may never have heard of!

 

Table Top

Like the name suggests, table top quizzes are games that are commonly played on a flat surface, such as a table, and are related to board games or tile-based games. Table top rounds are referred to as marathon rounds, and should be used as an additional round to keep your teams busy throughout the night and in between other rounds. 

 

Popular types of table top rounds include the likes of:

 

• Cryptic puzzles
• Word or number puzzles
• Our Survey Said
• Mystery Year
• Anagrams
• Think Link
• Dead or Alive
• Chart Toppers

 

They can be centred around the theme of your quiz or they can test a particular category such as sport, TV and film, music and so on. 

 

At Quiz on Demand, we offer ready to use table top sheets that feature four different quiz games. Our table top quizzes feature alternating games each week with special rounds, such as catchphrases. 

 

Our questions come with the answers separately, and all you are required to do is to print off the copies and hand them round to the participants. We provide bars, pubs, venues and quiz hosts an option of fresh content that cannot be answered using Google either!

Take a look! You can download the free sample of a typical Table Top Quiz.

 

Download Your Table Top Quizzes

 

Riddles 

On a similar line to a table top round, you could have a single round solely dedicated to riddles. Try to find the lesser known riddles to prevent teams from immediately knowing the answer, but try not to make it too hard as participants may begin to get bored. 

 

What Happens Next?

If you have a few screens around your pub that can be easily seen, you could do a round of ‘what happens next?’. This type of round can be used to switch up your standard entertainment round.

 

For example, you could play famous scenes from movies and have your participants guess what happens after that scene is played. Alternatively, you could get your teams to guess what famous line is spoken. 

 

Pop Bingo

Pop Bingo is a fun and engaging round of bingo which includes famous bands and singers rather than numbers. Each team or player should be given a bingo sheet which has the names of 20 artists on them. 

 

Throughout the night, you should play music from a list of 50 selected songs. Players then simply mark off the artists as they hear them. Your teams/individuals can play for a line and then a full house.

 

This is a great way to keep your participants engaged with the quiz as they will have to pay attention to the music being played in order to win. Pop Bingo is available from Quiz on Demand and you can customise your Pop Bingo sheets to best suit your crowd.

 

Slogan Rounds 

Pick a category, such as food and drink, and read out the advertising slogan for those specific brands. So, you may read out lines such as “It gives you wings”, and your teams would have to guess what brand that is. In this case, it would be Red Bull.

 

Geo-Guesser

This round could either be a picture round or a video played on screens – we suggest using screens for this though as it is much easier than printing pictures out. 

 

To play Geo-Guesser, all you need to do is show clips of people walking around cities for up to 30 seconds. Your teams will then have to guess what city they are walking around. This is a great test to see who is concentrating, or who is the best travelled!

 

Reverse Quiz

A reverse quiz involves giving your teams the answer and making them guess the question. 

 

For example, instead of asking a question like “When was the moon landing?”, you would simply say 1969 and offer multiple choice answers like:

• When did England win the FIFA World Cup?
• When was the moon landing?
• What year did The Beatles release “Let It Be?”
• What year did Mary Quant invent the mini skirt?

 

You don’t have to limit yourself to just dates, you could instead have simple answers such as phrases and sayings. 

 

Over-simplified Synopsis

For this round, you will need to be slightly more creative. Take 10 different films and create a really overly-simplified synopsis for your player to guess from. This is a great round to get your teams thinking and working together.

For example, for “A group spends 9 hours trying to return jewellery” would be Lord of the Rings. 

 

Themed Rounds

If you don’t want to have your whole quiz revolving around one specific theme, you could instead choose one themed round. For example, if you are making a quiz for the end of October and you don’t want to make it fully Halloween themed, you can instead just throw in a Halloween round. 

We have a great selection of different themed quizzes you can choose from to switch it up from the usual popular rounds. 

 

Backwards Songs

Slightly different from the usual music round, playing songs backwards is one way to make things a bit more interesting and switch up the traditional quiz rounds. 

Remix songs if you are the creative type, or source backwards music clips online and have your teams figure out what the song is. This can be a tricky round, but it is again a great one to get your teams to pay attention to the quiz. 

If you think your current quiz is too easy, take a look at our guide on how to make a pub quiz hard.