It is a battle to keep up normalcy in lockdown. I really liked my birthday last year, and so felt it was important to not let this one go by just because we are going through an exceptional time. I have organized two quizzes previously and thought both went down well. Here is an outline of what I used for the Zoom Pubquiz on 09-05-2020:

  • Google Form for registration.
  • Whatsapp group with participants.
  • Teams of 4/5 players created beforehand.
  • Zoom room for the quiz.
  • Google slides for showing questions.

  • Google form per round for submitting answers.

    There were a few hickups initially. As the host of the room, you have a lot of control, but no good way to tell what others are seeing. In the future I would use at least two separate screens: one that is constantly shared with participants and one with the controls for Zoom. Here was what I had to keep in mind during the quiz:

  • Assign team members to Zoom breakout rooms. Upon reconnection, reassign.
  • Send participants to break out rooms after asking questions.
  • Go to the next slide.
  • Pay attention to when participants (automatically) return from breakout rooms.
  • Keep an eye on Zoom chat and Whatsapp.


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The quiz had 5 rounds with 10 questions each. Teams had 1 minute in their breakout room to discuss and answer a question. Additionally, in the first four rounds, the time in the breakout rooms needed to be used to do a Zoom challenge before the round ended. The challenges were:

  1. Pick a team name and a team captain (captain posts the name in the Whatsapp group).
  2. Team members hold up ingredients that would work well in a dish.
  3. Count to 29, team members taking turns to say a number. Any number containing 7 or a multitude of 7 is forbidden. Also 11 and 22. Say anything else in place of these numbers.
  4. Pass a cup between all team members.

The questions can be downloaded from here.

I especially enjoyed that last round, in which participants had to guess an earthly place from the Zoom background. After wrapping up the quiz (congratulations to Team Tafel 1, 450 points), we turned off the slides and had a chat with the group. It was a happy birthday.


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