PULTEVENT
Trivia night software: 7 round types that score themselves
Half-time at a running club's trivia night. Forty people, eight teams, and me in the corner with a red pen, marking answer sheets that smell faintly of spilled cider. Team 5 has written "Mount Everest?" with a question mark, and I have to decide whether that counts. Meanwhile the room has gone quiet in the bad way. People are looking at their phones, and not because of the quiz.
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That night is why I stopped marking paper. In PULTEVENT the questions go up on the projector, every team answers on a phone, and the score is on the screen before I have finished reading out the right answer. No pens, no sheets, no disputes about handwriting. The half-time lull turns into a leaderboard everyone is watching.
One thing to be straight about: the ready-made quiz decks in the platform are mostly in Russian today. For an English trivia night you write your own rounds in the quiz builder, in any language. Most hosts I know prefer that anyway, because their best questions are the ones they wrote for that crowd.
7 trivia round types that score themselves
1 Classic four-option round
Question on the projector, four options on the phones. The right answer is shuffled between A, B, C and D every time, so no team learns that it's always C.
How to run it. Read each question aloud even though it's on screen. Some people can't see from the back, and your voice sets the pace.
It's the backbone of the night. Everyone knows how it works, so it's the round you start with.
2 Build-your-own rounds
The quiz builder takes a question, the correct answer and three wrong ones. Or fill in the Excel template with one question per row and upload it.
How to run it. Write the wrong answers as carefully as the right one. A bad distractor gives the game away.
Your local references, your inside jokes, your crowd. That's what separates a trivia night people come back to.
3 The category board
Topics across the top, point values down the side, in the style of a TV quiz show. Teams pick a cell, you open the question.
How to run it. Put the hardest questions at the bottom but make one of them secretly easy. Someone will gamble on it.
It gives teams a choice, and choices make people argue. Arguing teams are engaged teams.
4 True or false lightning round
Facts go up one after another. Teams vote Believe or Don't believe from their phones, then you reveal the truth with a sound cue.
How to run it. Keep it quick. Ten facts, no discussion time. It's a palate cleanser between heavy rounds.
It wakes the room up after a long round without asking anyone to think too hard.
5 Timeline round
Events and dates, and the teams have to work out what came first. It sounds easy until two things happened in the same decade.
How to run it. Mix big world events with small local ones: when the pub opened, when the club was founded.
Teams talk to each other more in this round than any other. You'll hear it from the stage.
6 Picture round
Photos on the projector instead of words. Famous faces cropped tight, landmarks from odd angles, or guests' baby photos at a private party.
How to run it. Show each picture long enough for the back tables to see it properly. Twenty seconds is a minimum.
People who hate general knowledge are often very good at faces. This round gives them their moment.
7 Final and awards
The team scoreboard collects every round, then runs an awards ceremony: fun awards first, then third, second and the winner with confetti.
How to run it. Edit the fun awards before the night. "Dark Horse" for the team that came from last is always a good one.
Trivia nights often end with a mumbled "well done, team 3". This ends with a proper finish.
Answers from phones
Each team answers on a phone. Nothing to hand out, nothing to collect, nothing to mark.
The screen keeps score
Points go to the right team as answers come in. You read the question and the room watches the table move.
Rounds of different shapes
Multiple choice, a category board, true or false, a timeline, a picture round. Variety keeps a long night awake.
Your questions, your language
Type them into the builder or fill in an Excel template: question, right answer, three wrong ones.
Why paper answer sheets hold a trivia night back
Paper has three costs. Marking time, which is dead air for the room. Disputes, because handwriting is ambiguous and a table will fight for half a point. And the reveal, which is flat because the scores come in one lump at the end of a round.
Phones remove all three. There is nothing to mark, the answer either matches or it doesn't, and the scores move while you are still talking. The half-time break becomes a moment to look at the leaderboard instead of a moment to check email.
One phone per team, or one per person
For a classic trivia night, one phone per team is best. The team huddles, argues, and one person taps. It keeps the social part of trivia, which is the whole point.
For a big room where people aren't sitting in teams, let everyone answer on their own phone. There is a second scoreboard mode for that, showing the share of correct answers across the whole room round by round.
Writing English rounds when the built-in decks are Russian
The platform ships with themed quiz decks, but most of them are in Russian at the moment. I would rather say that plainly than have you find out at 7 pm.
The builder solves it. You can type questions straight in or prepare them in a spreadsheet and upload. Each question needs a right answer and three wrong ones; the platform shuffles the letters for you. A round of ten questions takes about half an hour to write well. Your custom rounds stay in your account and can be reused next month.
What you need at the venue
A laptop, a projector or big TV, and a cable. Sound helps for the true or false cues and music rounds, so plug into the venue speakers if you can.
The phones need internet. Each team can use its own mobile data, so you don't depend on the venue wifi, but check the signal in the room before the doors open. There is no offline mode for phone answers. If the building is a signal dead zone, sort out wifi or plan a quiz where answers are shouted out and you score by hand.
Running a trivia night online
Share the stage window in a video call and the remote teams see the questions just like the room does. They scan the code off their screen and answer on their phones.
Remote and in-person teams can sit on the same scoreboard. Allow a couple of seconds for the call delay before you close each question.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, a host who has run weddings, company parties and birthdays since 2014: more than 500 events, and TOP 100 Awards best host in Moscow (2024) and Saint Petersburg (2023). He built the console for his own events first.
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How to run a trivia night with phone answers
- 1
Write your rounds in the quiz builder or upload them from the Excel template.
- 2
Add a category board round, a picture round and a true or false round for variety.
- 3
At the venue, connect the laptop to the projector and check mobile signal in the room.
- 4
Put the QR code on screen and have one person per team join with the team name.
- 5
Run the rounds, read each question aloud, and let the scoreboard update as answers arrive.
- 6
Finish with the awards ceremony and export the results if the organiser wants them.
FAQ
Do teams need to download anything?
Does it score automatically?
Are there ready-made English quizzes?
Can I import questions from a spreadsheet?
What if the venue has bad signal?
Can remote teams join?
What does it cost?
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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