TRIVIA BYTES DATABASE MAP … Notes by Sean McMaster

I create multimedia (using PowerPoint) pub trivia events and I in those I present questions in a
variety of formats, as well as other bonus games, so I need to be able to create a database of not
only just the standard straight one question-one answer format but also a variety of other types,
including:

Multiple Answers
Players are asked one question and must name as many (usually 2-5 but can be up to 8 or 9) of the
correct answers as possible

Example: Who are the last 4 people to have been President of France … Which 6 actors have
officially played James Bond … What are the 2 species of elephant, etc

Picture questions
Players are given an image(s) and asked a question about it (often identifying the person, place,
animal, etc in the images)

Example: Of what country is this man Prime Minister … This is the national flag of what
country … This is the logo of what car brand, etc

Multiple Choice
Players are asked a question and given (usually 5) options from which to choose the correct answer

Example: What is the definition of “capacious”? A: Able to store electricity, B: Goat-like, C:

Loner, independent, D: Moody and unpredictable, E: Roomy, plenty of space

Rank 'em
Players are given 5 things and the criteria on which they must try to rank or order them

Example: Rank these 5 historic buildings by when they were built, earliest to most recent …
Rank these 5 famous athletes by their height, tallest to shortest … Rank these 5 countries by
population, largest to smallest

Red Herring
Players are given two columns. Column A has a list of 6 items and Column B has 7 items. Each item in
Column A matches with one of the ones in B. Players must try to work out what matches what, and
therefore find the "Red Herring" from Column B

Example: Column A: 6 x novels Column B: The 6 x authors + 1 red herring

Table of Doom
Players are given a list of 6 items and a question. They must choose which items in the list fit the
question, without choosing incorrect ones (they lose points for incorrect ones)

Example: Which of these inventions were named after their inventor … Which of these
Australian Prime Ministers were leaders of the Labor Party … Which of these cities have
hosted a Winter Olympic Games, etc

Who Am I?
Players are given a series of 4 batches of clues, starting with very vague and difficult clues and
gradually getting more and more obvious, leading to the identity of a celebrity or famous person

Example: Clues 1: Born in Springfield, Ma. in 1904 of German heritage … Writer, cartoonist,
publisher, artist, and poet. Clues 2: Began career as advertising illustrator but passion was
writing … Four feature films have been made based on my books. Clues 3: Sold over 600
million books and translated into 20 languages … Real name is Theodor Geisel. Clues 4: Used
“Dr.” in my pen name because my father wanted me to study medicine … I wrote The Cat in
the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham

Audio
An audio clip is played, and players must answer a question about the clip. This is usually some form
of question asking about a music clip but can occasionally be other things.

Example: Name this song and artist … What one year were all these songs released … About
whom is this person speaking, etc

Video
As above but question is based on a video clip

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As well as these different format questions, I also present a number of bonus GAMES for the teams
to play. These include:

Endgame
A game involving automatically transitioning PowerPoint slides of various types of challenges –
solving picture or word puzzles, identifying famous people or things from images etc. Each Endgame
will be of one type or theme

Example: Name these famous comedians … What year were these movies released … Solve
these summer-themed picture puzzles, etc

Last Man Standing

Teams try to stay in the game by naming one item on a finite list or else be eliminated. Last team left
wins.

Example: The 51 Mr Men characters … The 20 national flags with red, white and blue … The
36 NFL teams, etc
Buttheads
Individual players must decide whether each item in a list fits a set Criteria A (by putting their hands
on their head) or criteria B (hands on butt).

Example: Athlete or Scientist? … Born in Australia or New Zealand? … Bird of Fish?, etc

50/50
Similar to Buttheads but everybody plays and questions are random multiple choice (with 2 choices)
trivia questions. Players try to choose correct answer of the two to keep themselves in the game.

Example: Who is taller? Johnny Depp or Robert Downey Jr? … Is Cuba north or south of the
equator? … Who co-created The Hulk with Stan Lee? Steve Ditko or Jack Kirby?, etc

Trivia Triathlon
Teams are given 3 puzzles to solve, utilising different parts of their brain/ways of thinking –
wordplay, logic puzzles, maths and number sequences etc. The team works together to solve the
first puzzle then works on the second one once they get it right etc. First to solve the third one wins

The Numbers Game

Each team has a whiteboard and marker and a series of amazing and bizarre questions are read out
whose answers are always a number. Teams try to guess the closest to the correct answer to win
prizes.

Example: How many kilometres from earth to the moon … What is the average lifespan of a
bullfrog … What percentage of Americans cannot identify Russia on a world map, etc
Additional notes:

I envisage this database working a certain way so that it is functional for me but obviously I am
relying on you to let me know what can and can’t be done. Ideally, I would like to be able to do the
following:

DATA ENTRY
-The HOME PAGE is my launching pad. When I want to write a question I click the particular type and
an entry page opens as I’ve described for each type in the spreadsheet.

- Once a question is written I need to be able to assign at least one [Genre] to it. Some questions
may fit with multiple [Genre] so I need to be able to select multiples. Also, under each [Genre], once
selected, a pull down menu showing [Categories] that fit under that [Genre] can be selected from,
and each of those will have multiple more specific [Subjects] available to choose too. I don’t know
what the logistics of this are but as you will see in my own Access Database I’ve attached, I did
something similar. You don’t need to add any of the [Categories] or [Subjects]. I just need to be able
to constantly create new ones as I build up the database.

SEARCHING

I would like to be able to search QUESTIONS by range and/or criteria, as well as sort those results by
certain criteria.

Example: Search for all AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHY [Category] questions with >2 answers [#
Answers] and [Difficulty] of 4-8, then sort those by Difficulty level.

The above example search would return only questions of QA type because they are the only ones
that have the [# Answers] field but if I instead searched for:

Search for all AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHY [Category] questions with [Difficulty] of 4-8, then
sort those by Difficulty level, then all question types could result – QA, MC, REM, RH, TOD,
WHO, AUD, VID

Is it possible for me to also include in the parameters to include/exclude any or all of the Question
types? Perhaps by ticking checkboxes?

Example: Search only QA, MC, AUD, VID for all AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHY [Category]
questions with [Difficulty] of 4-8, then sort those by Difficulty level

When searching for any of the GAMES I will only ever be searching for one type (END, LMS, BH, 50/,
TRI, or NUM) but will still need to search by [Genre] etc