book_142Thanks to all who entered the best quiz question in the world competition. Here are the 2 winning entries, plus some of the most interesting runners-up.

Winners

The winning text question comes from Anne Kalytta, who gets herself a free copy of my top-selling quizmaster book: How To Make £100 A Night (Or More) As A Pub Quizmaster.

Her winning question finds a connection between some rather unlikely-looking elements:

Q) A dance, a sport, a place to stay, an Asian country and a womans name.  What is the womans name?

A) Juliet. (It's theNATO phonetic alphabet, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India..... Juliet)

Anne explains why she entered this question:

"When I used this in my quiz, three teams worked it out but only after *quite* some time;-)  Much as I hate the phrase, it's a real "Think outside the box" type question."

When I surveyed quizmasters recently for their favourite quiz questions, these lateral-thinking type questions were very popular and that's one of the reasons I've picked it as the winner.

Also, although plainly quite difficult, is possible to get the answer with most peoples' general knowledge and if anyone does get it they'll surely be very pleased with themselves. A nice combination of factors to make a great question.

There was also a quizmaster book for Best Picture Question category which was won with this map teaser from Dave Matthews:

Q. Correct as of June 2010, what does this map represent?

680px-Eurovision_winners_map

A. Winners of the Eurovision song contest

I like maps and I love Eurovision, so this was a winner for me and it earns Dave Matthews a copy of the book. I like the question because there's enough nagging familiarity in the question to keep quizzers guessing until they get (or don't get) the answer.

Runners Up

Here's a few close runners up worth a mention. The first one is a little bit of monkey madness from Robin Leake:

Q. Which member of the ape family has the Latin name "gorilla gorilla"

A. Gorilla

 

Robin explains the appeal behind this seemingly dumb quiz question:

I think this is the best question because even serious quizzers doubt themselves and guess an alternative answer. I have used this and the success rate is only about 50%."
Here's another one from Tom Gallagher which is very hard. Perhaps a bit too hard for my liking despite the interesting pay-off. Q. The USS Phoenix survived the attack on Pearl Harbour without a scratch. It was thereafter known as "the luckiest ship in the US navy". After decommissioning from the navy it was sold to a foreign navy and renamed what? A. The General Belgrano.
"Always a good reaction to the answer from quizzers. People find it ironic that this ship survived the murderous attack by the forces of Nippon only to be sent to the bottom of the Atlantic by us! Interesting eh?"

There were loads more and nearly all entries were of a high standard. Thanks to everyone for taking part.

Yo, Dr Paul