PULTEVENT
Pub quiz round ideas: 8 rounds that work on a TV screen
Sunday afternoon, a kitchen table in Stockport, a pot of tea going cold. The quizmaster of the Thursday quiz at the Crown has a notebook open at a page that says ROUND 3 and nothing else. General knowledge is done, the music round is done, and for the fourth week running he is staring at the gap where something new should go. The regulars have noticed. Table two told him last week they could guess the categories before he announced them.
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The questions are not usually the problem with a tired pub quiz. The format is. Six rounds of ten questions read aloud, answers on paper, marked at the bar: after a year, even great questions feel the same. Changing the shape of a round, how people answer it rather than what they are asked, is what makes a Thursday feel different.
Some of these rounds only work because the questions go on a screen and teams answer on a phone. I run them with PULTEVENT: my laptop drives the pub TVs, and each team's captain scans a QR code and answers in the phone's browser, no app involved. The captains' phones need internet, through the pub Wi-Fi or their own data. The rest work on paper just as well, if that is your pub.
8 pub quiz rounds, and how to run each on a TV
1 The picture round, done properly
Instead of a sheet of twenty faces handed out at the start, each picture comes up on the TV one by one: a famous landmark from an odd angle, a celebrity as a child, a close-up of a household object.
How to run it. Crop tight at first, then show the full image on the reveal. Use images you have the right to use, or photograph things yourself.
The groan when the full picture appears is worth the round on its own.
2 Timeline
Five events on the screen, teams put them in date order on their phones: the first moon landing, decimalisation, the opening of the Channel Tunnel, and so on.
How to run it. Spread the dates wide on the first question and bunch them up later. Three events in the same decade will start arguments.
It rewards the table that knows roughly when things happened, not only the one that knows exact facts.
3 True or false, quick-fire
Twenty statements in quick succession, eight seconds each, tap true or false. Pace is the whole point.
How to run it. Use it straight after the interval to wake the room up. Keep the statements short enough to read aloud in one breath.
Weaker teams score here, which keeps them coming back next week.
4 The board final
A board of categories and point values on the TV, in the style of the classic game-show board. Teams take turns choosing a square, higher values mean harder questions.
How to run it. Let the bottom team choose first. It closes the gap and keeps the end of the night tense.
Choosing is a decision, and decisions make teams talk to each other.
5 Local knowledge
Questions about your own town: the name of the chip shop before it changed hands, the year the bypass opened, which pub the darts team moved from.
How to run it. Ask the landlord and the older regulars. They love being consulted.
Nobody can look this up in the toilets, and it makes the quiz feel like it belongs to the pub.
6 The music round from the deck
You play a snippet of a track from the built-in DJ deck, teams pick the artist or the year from four options on their phones.
How to run it. Start snippets partway through a verse, not on the famous intro. Check your pub's music licence covers what you play.
Music rounds get people singing, and a singing pub buys more at the bar.
7 Picture of the regulars
Baby or school photos of willing regulars, the landlord and the bar staff. Teams guess who is who.
How to run it. Only with permission, and only once or twice a year. It loses its charm if it becomes a weekly thing.
The best Christmas or anniversary round you will ever run.
8 The jackpot question
One question at the end of the night, one answer per team, a prize that rolls over if nobody gets it. Revealed on the TV with a countdown.
How to run it. Make it hard but fair: something you could know, not something only the setter knows.
A rollover brings teams back the following week who would otherwise have skipped it.
Change the shape, not just the topic
Ordering, true-or-false, choosing from a board: each asks a different kind of thinking.
Pictures that everyone can see
On the TV the whole pub sees the same image at the same size. No photocopied sheets.
Scores as you go
Phone answers are marked automatically, so the scoreboard is up after every round.
Your own questions
Every round is built in the quiz builder, in English, by you.
Putting the rounds in order
Open with something anyone can score on, true or false or an easy general knowledge round, while late teams are still sitting down. Put the round that needs the most thought, timeline or local knowledge, third, when people are settled but not yet too many pints in. After the interval, pace again. Save the board for the end, because it brings the scores together.
Six rounds is plenty for a two-hour quiz with an interval. Eight is a long night.
Writing questions that read well on a screen
A question on the TV is read by forty people at once, some of them at the back by the fruit machine. Keep it under twenty words. Put the key word at the end: "Which planet has the most moons?" reads better than a question that buries the subject in the middle.
Answer options should be the same length and the same type. If three answers are cities and one is a country, you have given it away.
The joker, and other old habits
Plenty of pubs let each team play a joker for double points on one round. You can keep that. Tell teams to shout it to you before the round starts and add the extra points on the scoreboard by hand. Old habits like the joker and the rollover are part of what regulars come for, so change the rounds, not the rituals.
How many rounds need phones
Not all of them. Timeline, true or false and the board only really work with phones. A picture round works on the TV with paper answers, and a local knowledge round works read aloud. If your older regulars grumble, keep one paper round a night and let them feel at home.
"Can we still write the answers down?"
"For round two, Jean. Every week."
Getting the pub set up
One laptop, an HDMI cable to the main TV, and the Wi-Fi password printed on a card on each table. If the pub has two screens on a splitter, both show the same thing. Teams can use mobile data if the Wi-Fi is patchy. Without any signal, the phone rounds do not run, so check the corner tables before quiz night, not during it.
The ready-made quiz decks inside the platform are mostly in Russian for now. For a British pub you will be writing your own, which is how a good pub quiz ought to be anyway.
Trying the rounds out
There is a 3-day demo, free and without a card. Build two of these rounds on a Tuesday, test them on the Thursday, and see how the room takes them. If you keep going, it is a one-time licence rather than a monthly bill; pultevent.ru/en has the price.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who has hosted weddings, birthdays and office parties since 2014: over 500 events, best host of Moscow 2024 and of Saint Petersburg 2023 at the TOP 100 Awards. He made it for his own nights first. The rest is at pultevent.ru/en.
How to add new rounds to your pub quiz
- 1
Pick one new round type to try, not four at once.
- 2
Write it in the quiz builder alongside your usual rounds.
- 3
Put the Wi-Fi password on the tables and one team captain per table.
- 4
Run a practice question so every captain has scanned the code.
- 5
Play the new round in the middle of the night, not first or last.
- 6
Ask the regulars afterwards whether it stays.
FAQ
How many questions per round?
Does every team need a phone?
Can people cheat by looking things up?
Can I mix paper and phone rounds?
Where do I get the questions?
Is it a subscription?
What if a question turns out to be wrong?
See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
All audience interactions, a second screen and timing in one app. Guests join by QR — internet is needed for you and for them.
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