Did you know that one of the greatest benefits of trivia games is increased brain health? It’s true! In fact, research suggests that older adults who frequently participate in intellectually and socially engaging activities exhibit higher cognitive function than those who do not.
By answering questions and learning, you’re improving your cognitive skills. Retaining information about topics you’re interested in is like an exercise for your mind, allowing you to expand your intelligence and improve mental capabilities. This leads to greater creativity, innovation and problem-solving skills. Plus, you’re now able to show off those new facts you’ve learned to impress friends and family.
When you play trivia games, you’re also enhancing your socialization opportunities. What better way to get to know your friends and neighbors than through friendly competition? Playing games allows the chance to foster conversation and connection.
Thanks to trivia, you’re able to build a community through the sharing of common knowledge, a unique way to build relationships. You’re able to connect to others on a more personal level by sharing the task of finding the right answer to a question.
Creating Trivia Questions
Writing trivia questions can be a lot of fun. It can also be challenging to get the right mix of questions to make a quiz that’s not too hard or too easy, and that the user will want to share with their friends and family. But with a little strategy upfront you can knock it out of the park.
Here are the 5 tips to consider when writing a trivia quiz
- The Title: The title of the quiz should be fun and timely. If the title of the quiz makes people smile, you have a winner you can run any time of the year (“Famous Movie Quotes”).
- If it’s timely, you have a winner for a particular season (“Test Your Holiday Knowledge”). But, if you combine them at the right time, you’ll hit a home run (“Holiday Movie Quotes”).
- Strategy: Have a strategy for what topics your questions will cover given the title. I like 10 question trivia surveys because you can easily compute your percentage. You got 8 out of 10. What is your percentage right? It’s easy to compute. 80%. Before I write a single question, I come up with a strategy. For the Holiday Movie Quotes Trivia quiz, I first researched the top holiday movies ever made. I decided I wanted to have one quote from each of the top 10 popular movies. Then I searched, for example, for “Elf movie quotes.” I picked quotes there weren’t too long, weren’t too obvious, and were funny.
- Arrangement: Order the questions to make the user feel like they’re on a thrill ride. Make the first question funny and easy. It gives people the confidence to continue on with the quiz. Put the harder questions in the middle and right toward the end. Think of it like a roller coaster – don’t just go up and then down; go up and down and all around at different heights.
- Correct Answer Placement: Randomly position your correct answers. Once I have come up with the questions, the first thing I do is decide on the positioning of the correct answers. I always go with 4 answers, just like the ACT and SAT. To start, I enter placeholders – like the letters A, B, C, and D – for all the answers. Then I come back and put in the correct answer in a varied way.
- I take the quiz in this format to see if I have done a good job mixing up the positioning of the correct answers. Once I’m satisfied, I start filling in the wrong answers
- Wrong Answer Placement: The real art of writing trivia is the wrong answers. Have a goal in mind before you set out. My goal is for the average person to get 7 out of 10 correct. Have at least one tough question. Make it tough by having all the answers be nearly identical. For example, in a qyiz about old movies, the player should instantly be able to tell that those quotes are from old movies, but which one?
Using Your Creative Skills In Brain Games
Brain Games allow you to explore the mind, have fun and develop certain skills you never thought you had in you. The benefits of having an active mind can never be overstated. An active mind makes working, playing and communication more enjoyable and less stressful. They challenge your mind to reach the best of its capabilities. Creating your own Brain Games at home will not only benefit you, but also if you have children, you can have them join in. The more, the merrier.
How Creative Question/Answer Brain Games Work
Question: In the 50s, a player missed the pitch during tryout in the Washington Senate game. Which player missed the tryout?
The key is to try and use your mind to figure out who this player was that missed the pitch, rather than looking below for the answer.
Answer: Fidel Castro missed the Washington Senate tryout.
Question: What is the undeviating expansion amidst two individuals?
Answer: Laughter.
