How to host a quiz game night with friends

A quiz game night is one of the cheapest and most fun ways to get friends together. You need questions, a way to keep score and some snacks. It works in a living room, a hostel common room or on a video call, and it scales from four people to twenty.

Here is a simple plan that takes about an hour to prepare and a couple of hours to play.

Before the night

• Pick a host. The host reads the questions and keeps score, so they either sit out or only play the rounds they didn't write.
• Split into teams of two to four. Mix people who don't know each other well, so nobody is stuck with only their best friend.
• Plan five rounds of eight to ten questions each. A round should take about fifteen minutes.
• Keep score on a whiteboard, a sheet of paper or a shared note on your phone: one point per correct answer, two in the final round.
• Arrange small prizes: a chocolate bar, the last slice of pizza, or the right to pick next week's movie.

Five rounds that always work

1. General knowledge. Mix easy and hard questions on India, sports, science and the news. Skip anything people could just look up on their phones.
2. Emoji movies and songs. Show a film or song title in emojis only and teams write the answer. Bollywood titles work especially well.
3. Picture round. Share close-up photos of everyday objects, famous landmarks or childhood cartoon characters and ask teams to name them.
4. Music round. Play the first five seconds of a song; teams write the song and the movie, with a bonus point for the singer.
5. Who knows me best. Before the night, everyone makes a 10-question quiz about themselves on Fake or Fam. In this round, players open each other's links and the leaderboards decide the winner.

Make it feel like a game show

• Give teams funny names and announce the scores after every round.
• Use a timer: thirty seconds per question keeps the energy up.
• Add a joker card that each team can play once to double their points in one round.
• End with a tie-breaker: the team closest to the answer of a number question, like the height of the Qutub Minar in metres, wins.

Playing online

On a video call, the host shares their screen for the picture and emoji rounds, and teams send their answers to the host in a private chat. Breakout rooms work well for team discussions. The "who knows me best" round needs nothing extra: share the quiz links in the group chat and compare scores at the end.

Keep it friendly

• Avoid questions that make fun of anyone's looks, marks, money or relationships.
• If someone is new to the group, put them in a team with welcoming people and start with an easy round.
• Cheer the funny wrong answers as loudly as the right ones. They are what everyone remembers the next day.