I know we’re living in really strange times at the moment, something none of us have really experienced before. I think one of the hardest things is feeling so distant from each other, but thankfully all my nearest and dearest are well connected, and I can contact them when I want. With that being said, it’s sometimes hard to talk about anything other than the current situation in our respective parts of Frankfurt/city/country, and it can become quite overwhelming. Great initiatives are popping up that are bringing people together, such as the amazing The Sofa Singers that I sang with the other day, but I wanted something a little more intimate. So, with that in mind, I decided to create, and host, a quiz for my family that we could play over Zoom.
I live in Germany, my parents live in North-West England, and my sister and her family live about two hours away, so we’re all very spread out. Although we are all in touch with each other every day, I thought it would be nice to bring us all together and do something silly and fun (my main goal at the moment).
This was so much harder than I imagined: I needed to keep everybody interested, and try and give them all the same chance. Some people are better at trivia than others, and even though my mum and dad watch The Chase every night, I know they might not be familiar with some things that the younger ones were. I also had to consider my four-year-old nephew, so he didn’t feel left out – it was a lot! Trying to keep all this in mind, I decided that everybody should have a “special subject” and the questions would be made from that.
Every round had three questions: one with a definitive answer, one multiple-choice, and one where the nearest guess got the points. Speaking of points, I lowered the points for people in their special subject round and gave more points if others got it right. With such diverse topics as Linken Park, Volkswagen Passats, and Pirates, this definitely helped to keep the quiz fresh!
I set the dress code as “dress to impress” so that we could wear something else other than our comfy clothes, and it was great, it made the call something a bit more special than a normal group chat. For something that I thought might take half an hour, actually took triple that though, but I think we all had fun.
I had a great time thinking of the concept and questions, and hosting the quiz, and I’m really glad I could bring us all together to talk about something other than the news. I’ll pass on the quizmaster duties to someone else next time around though, I was shattered afterwards!
New Day, New Thing 