Halloween Quiz

Hello, how the hell did you get into Marcus' LaserDisc Emporium, I really need to change those locks. I'm Marcus Gustafsson, the very unofficial CSS Quizmaster from 2023-2026, and it is my job to tell future generations my advice on how to run the Halloween Quiz, so please take something nice from the CSS Wiki drinks cabinet and pull up a chair! Of course, these are just my observations and the best piece of advice I have is make the quiz your own!

The Halloween Quiz tends to be 5 or 6 rounds of 8 questions each. It feels like that isn't much, but remember, pizza has to be served, answer papers marked, costume competitions competed and whatever other stuff is going on.

A time sacrifice I tend to make is to only give the answers online the day after, rather than read them out in person.

I tend to do a blend of Halloween themed rounds and more generic rounds so it isn't biased towards people with very specific Halloween knowledge. This is why I hate most Christmas quizzes because unless you spend all year watching 'It's a Wonderful Life' then you have no chance.

We do teams of 6 for the quiz as it means there is a good spread of knowledge and people get to meet up and hang out, which is cool.

The key to writing a good quiz is to make sure no team gets no marks and as few as possible get full marks for each round. This means you need a mix of question difficulties. I tend to write about what I am interested in, because it makes it more fun for me writing and also allows me to make more in depth questions, but of course this creates the risk of making a quiz only you understand.

Let's give an example of how to write a round about something you are an unashamed nerd in without turning off people who don't give a shit about your special interest:

I am a film buff (don't ask me how much I have spent on Blu-Ray), so I always do a film round. In 2025, I did a quiz round based off Letterboxd reviews. Basically, you had to guess what film is being reviewed based on two user reviews. Every film was horror or Halloween adjacent.

---

Here is a (relatively) easy question from that round: “This movie is literally perfect, it’s even got that green guy what’s his face” “How do I get the Steve Buscemi monster to come out of my closet at night”

The answer, by the way, is Monsters Inc. Since most of the films were horror, including an animated movie that is quite famous gives at least one question that someone without specialist knowledge can have a decent shot at, but without having it be a complete given, so they still get some satisfaction. This question is kept easy by including distinctive and memorable elements of the film in the question and having a widely viewed film as the answer.

---

Now lets make everyone really annoyed, here is a very hard question: “Hopkins & Mikkelson both play Lecter with a poise and polish, but Brian Cox seems like he actually eats people.” “A movie so good I had to change my profile picture after 4 years because William Petersen is a fox in this. Michael Mann undefeated.”

This question is very tricky, despite having elements that should be familiar. At least 50% of people will look at Lecter and think Hannibal Lecter. Great, they are about 5% off the way to an answer they are very unlikely to get. Plenty of people will put an answer like 'Silence of the Lambs', maybe someone will put in a 'Hannibal' but the actual answer is 'Manhunter'. I call this kind of question an 'advocacy question'. I love the film Manhunter (1986), and I want more people to know about, so I use the outlet available to me, the Halloween Quiz. You can do this for anything you like, it makes the quiz more fun to write and provides a great way to fit in extra tricky questions that use your knowledge. Try to avoid impossible questions, even this question was answered correctly by 2 teams, but it is a good challenge.

---

Lets give a final example: “If you are going into space, I think that you should leave your cat at home, he does not need the stress” “Typical orange cat behaviour from Jonesy”

This is what I would call a medium difficulty. The answer is Alien, but you definitely need not have seen it to get this one. I like having a few questions every round that you can educated guess your way through. The question says space, 'stress' implies horror, guess the space horror you know, and you have it. I like encouraging people to have a guess.

---

What have we learned from these questions then.

1. Have a variety of difficulties 2. Make sure you test a wide range of knowledge within the round topic 3. Throw in stuff you know and have a little fun with the hard answers 4. Make sure people can have a good guess, even if it is wrong

---

I avoid doing rounds that rely on AV or props as they are a massive pain in the arse. I say this from experience. They can also be a big accessibility concern. I also know this from experience.

I find the best way to break up the monotony of me reading out stuff and a good way to give a chance to get ahead on some of the marking is to do a picture round. Celebrities is a good one, because it allows me to throw in some more up-to-date state-of-the-art bleeding-edge pop culture references to stuff that I have no understanding of. I don't know who a Sabrina Carpenter is, but I can look them up on images.google.com and then copy and paste.

When doing a picture round, have fun with it. I have done celebrities poorly photoshopped into Halloween costumes and all kinds of stupid stuff.

I try my best to avoid current affairs and politics in the quiz, not because I have anything against news of the week style rounds, but because I like to offer a bit of escapism from the scary real world. Normally if I do a politician in the picture round, I try for an obscure one, normally an American senator or some such, so it isn't too close to home and allows for a nice hard question for the news obsessive types to get.

---

Always give an example, even if a round is obvious. The most important thing it does is standardise the answer format to make it easier when you are marking. We got into a little trouble once because of people not following the format I had expected, and you can certainly learn from my mistake there.

---

Connections rounds can be fun, and it is always good to check if there are any game show or online quiz formats you can adapt to avoid every question being a trivia question. This makes it more fun and encourages out of the box thinking.

Similarly, consider doing a guest round, these are a great way to mix up the topics of different rounds and get a wider appeal. Quality control is important though, and you need to make sure to fact check other rounds and ensure they work within your preferred format for the quiz.

---

Print out your answer sheets well in advance and make sure you have enough. You do not want to be running about on the day.

Normally the quiz starts at around 19:30, with signups from around 19:00ish. This gives time for people to find teams and get ready. We also normally do costume contest signups at the same time. I will talk about the costume contest later, stop rushing me.

I have a stack of answer papers on the desk, and when the quiz starts, every team is told to send up one person to get a paper and a pen. Give everyone a minute or two to settle, then pick up the mic.

I tend to hide in the little corner outside the ESO to avoid issues with interference on the mic. I normally introduce the round, then repeat the example twice. I give people maybe 30 seconds to process all of that, then I go with each question, stating them twice then giving between 45 seconds and two minutes between questions depending how much of a rush I am in. At the end of each round, I repeat each question and then give people time to finalise their answers and bring them to the front.

I always make sure each round is cross posted live on discord. I tend to prewrite any major text blocks I want cross posted like rules and such, then I will post each round in full as a pdf as keeping up posting each question gets very annoying. For picture rounds, make sure no manipulation can be done on the images in the pdf if you have edited them in some way.

I tend to do a picture round as round 3, as it gives me time to start marking the first 2 rounds, while people complete that round. The more marking you do yourself the better as it helps with marking consistency. Remember, this is the Halloween Quiz, be lenient! If you have the correct answers memorised, it makes marking way quicker, so it is good to mark yourself if you have the answers still in your head. Always prepare actual answers sheets too, in case other people need to help and also to upload afterwards.

For marking, I always use a google sheet to which the score for each round is added. I like to handmark each paper, and then add each paper in turn to the spreadsheet. Make sure your answer paper has space for a team name and round number before things get confusing.

Pizza normally arrives around round 2 or 3, keep an eye on when pizza is arriving, you don't want to be halfway through a round. I sometimes do the costume contest directly after pizza, as it allows people to finish eating while it happens. Speaking of which:

The Costume Contest is meant to be fun, so don't take it too seriously. I tend to have a handful of judges from committee, who each give a score out of 10. We ask each person to come to the front and queue if they signed up, or put their hand up if they can't come to the front.

I let each judge use whatever marking criteria they like. I ask each person what their name is and who/what they are dressed as. Each person then gives their score secretly on the spreadsheet. We try to keep this quick, maybe 20 seconds per person at most. We keep the results till the end. We don't announce scores or anything like that, or the complete order of everyone who entered, as we don't want anyone getting upset. Also remember that everyone has put effort into their costumes, even if some are still better than others.

Once you have marked everything, it is time to announce the winner. We do the costume contest first with a small prize like a CSS duck. We tend to announce the top 3 and their scores, with some drumrolls and such, then give the winning team their prizes. Blahaj's are nice. Keep a bonus question in reserve for a tiebreaker. Make sure to thank everyone for coming. This is when some people might start wanting to check marking. This is where you need to keep your eyes open. No matter how well you checked answers, or how well you thought you marked, you might have fucked up. Be humble, and if there is an issue, think up an appropriate response. For example, one year, a marking error due to a teams answers being partially ambiguous, changed the result of the quiz. We gave that team some prizes and also gave them the quiz victor role. If people are clearly wrong with their complaints, calmly say why they were marked the way they were.

Also make sure to take on quiz feedback at the end. Ask people you trust to be honest on their opinions. My quizzes got way better as they went along thanks to that.

So what have we learned. Well I guess, write questions about stuff you like without being insufferable, make it fun, encourage people, mark properly, and be nice.

That seems like a good lesson. I am by no means the worlds best Quizmaster, so you will definitely be able to improve on what I have done. I intend to put an archive of my past questions on the CSS google drive so we will see if I remember. If not, you can't VONC me now, I am long gone. If you have any questions, then someone on committee probably has me on Discord or knows someone who does, otherwise I am probably now too old to help you.

Goodnight and get out of my LaserDisc Emporium!