TableNight/Games/Team Quiz
Party · Teams · 10–25 minutes
Team Quiz
Questions appear on the big screen, answers come from the phones, and the leaderboard reshuffles every round. Best of all, you can write the questions yourself — about the people sitting in front of you.
Heads up: the game itself is still in Italian. This page is ready, the table isn't yet.
Open the Quiz room →What it is
This is the simplest game on the site, and the one you pull out when the group is large, when not everybody knows each other, or when there is half an hour and no appetite for explaining rules. A question appears on the big screen with its possible answers; everyone taps a choice on their phone; a few seconds later the board shows the correct answer and the updated standings. Then the next question comes.
What sets it apart from any other quiz comes down to two details. The first is time: answering correctly quickly is worth more than answering correctly at the end, so the leaderboard never settles and there is always somebody who can climb back. The second is content: you decide the questions, and that changes the nature of the evening completely.
The one tip worth more than all the others: stop using general-knowledge questions. A quiz built around your group — who missed the flight in Barcelona, how many coffees the colleague on the second floor drinks, what the grandmother's dog was called — is worth ten quizzes about European capitals. That is the difference between a pleasant evening and one people remember.
Game details
| Players | 2 to 40, individually or in teams. |
|---|---|
| Length | 10–25 minutes, depending on how many questions you load. |
| Suggested age | Depends on the questions: with the right deck, children can play too. |
| What you need | A big screen for the board and one phone per player (or per team). |
| Questions | Customisable: you can load your own. |
| Game language | Italian. |
| Sign-up | None. You join with a room code and a name. |
| Price | Free, with no in-game purchases. |
What you need to play
- A big screen. It is the heart of the game: the question, the countdown and the leaderboard all live there. A laptop plugged into the TV is ideal; failing that, a tablet works as long as the question is readable from the far side of the table.
- One phone per player. If you play individually, everyone needs a device. In teams one phone per team is enough: you agree on the answer quietly and one person enters it.
- An ordinary connection. Very little traffic goes through. It works on mobile data, even with five or six people sharing a single hotspot.
- Your own questions, if you have them. Not required — but they are what makes the game yours.
Setting up the room
- Open the board on the big screen Press the button above from the device that will act as the board, not from a phone. On the first launch of the evening the server may take up to a minute to wake up.
- Show the room code It appears at the top of the board. Read it out or let people copy it off the screen: that is all anyone needs to join.
- Everyone joins from their phone They open the site, type the code and pick a name. The name is visible to everyone on the board, which is worth mentioning to the more creative members of the group.
- Decide: teams or individuals Up to eight people, individual play works well; from twelve upwards teams hold the group together and stop anyone from becoming a spectator.
- Start The first question appears on the board and the countdown begins immediately.
How it plays
The question
It appears on the board with its possible answers and a running timer. Nobody can answer before the question is visible, so everyone starts at the same instant.
The answer
Each player taps their choice on their phone. The answer registers immediately and cannot be changed: the first thing you touch is the one that counts. Your phone does not tell you whether you were right — the board does, for everybody at once.
The scoring
Answering correctly earns points; answering correctly and fast earns more. The advantage for quick players is real but not crushing, and it serves one purpose: stopping the group from settling. Someone two questions behind can still come back, which keeps everyone paying attention to the end.
The leaderboard
After every question the board shows the updated standings. This is the moment people shout, so it is worth not rushing it: leave a few seconds before launching the next question.
How you win
Whoever has the most points when the questions run out. There is nothing else: no final bonus, no double-points question that overturns everything. That is deliberate — final multiplier rounds make everything that came before pointless, and people notice.
Writing good questions
A good deck is recognisable by three things.
- The questions are short. A question that fills four lines on the board cannot be read in time. If it needs a long set-up, the question is wrong.
- They have an indisputable answer. "What was the best film of 2019" starts an argument, not a score. "What year did it come out" works.
- They are about the people in the room. This is the golden rule. Questions about the group make even the people who get them wrong laugh — and the people who get them wrong need to laugh, or they switch off.
A deck of twenty questions covers a full game. If there are more than fifteen of you, stay under fifteen questions: with a big crowd each round takes longer, and a twenty-five minute game becomes a forty-minute one.
Tips for your first game
- Run one practice question. Just one, trivially easy, before starting for real: it confirms everyone is connected and has worked out where to tap. It saves ten minutes of confusion.
- Don't leave the leaderboard up too long. Pace is the most valuable thing you have.
- Alternate difficulty. Three hard questions in a row and half the table gives up. Put an easy one every third question.
- If somebody arrives late, they join with the same code and play from the next round. Nothing restarts.
The mistakes that ruin a game
- Using somebody's phone as the board. It does not work: the question has to be visible to everyone at the same moment, otherwise somebody always reads it late and the timed scoring becomes unfair.
- Too many questions. Forty questions feel like a good idea while you are writing them and are torture by number twenty. Better to finish while people still want more.
- Questions that exclude people. If half the deck is about the jobs of five people out of twenty, the other fifteen switch off.
- Letting the fastest thumb dominate. If somebody in the group answers in half a second, put them in a team: it evens out by itself.
Why the first launch is slow
The quiz runs on a server that shuts down when nobody is playing and wakes up for the first person who arrives. The first launch of the evening can take up to a minute; meanwhile the site shows a waiting screen and takes you in by itself as soon as the server answers. Anyone joining after you waits nothing. There is a full explanation in the guide on games with nothing to download.
Frequently asked questions
How many people can play at once?
Up to forty. Under six, individual play is better; over twelve, teams work better: the board gets busier but nobody sits out, and the group has to discuss before answering.
Can I really load my own questions?
Yes, and it is the reason this quiz exists. A custom deck is what turns the game into something about your group rather than about capitals and rivers.
Does everyone need their own phone?
For individual play, yes. In teams one phone per team is enough: you agree on the answer and one person enters it. It is also the best way to include somebody whose battery is dead.
Can we play over a video call?
Yes. One person shares the screen with the board and everyone else answers from their phone. One caveat: screen sharing introduces a few seconds of lag, so with speed-based scoring whoever is sharing starts with an advantage. If you are playing seriously, let that person referee instead. The rest of the setup is in the guide to playing remotely.
Are answers stored anywhere?
No. Names and answers live in memory for the length of the game and vanish when the room closes. There is no match archive and no user profile: the details are on the privacy page.