Not every quiz question needs a correct answer.
Sometimes you just need a good image, a room full of people, and an excuse to be funny.
One QuizLinq user recently did exactly that. Instead of using a Text Entry question to ask for a fact, they showed an image and asked:
Best caption for this image wins a point.
That's it.
There was no answer key. No predefined correct answer. Everyone submitted their own caption, and the quizmaster chose the winner.
The funniest answer got the point.
Turn a Text Entry question into a competition
Text Entry is the question type where players type their own answer instead of picking one from a list. Normally you'd have a right answer in mind: name the song, identify the city.
But you don't actually need one.
For a caption competition, the answers are the entertainment.
Show an image. Ask for a caption. Let everyone submit their best attempt.
Then read through the answers and pick your favourite.
It could be the funniest. The cleverest. The most ridiculous. Or simply the one that made you laugh.
You decide.
The image does most of the work
The trick is choosing an image that invites interpretation.
A strange facial expression. An awkward situation. Something completely out of context. A dog that looks like it has just made a terrible decision. A photograph where you can imagine ten different stories happening just outside the frame.
The less obvious the intended joke, the better.
You're not asking players to identify what's in the picture. You're giving them something to react to.
And because everyone sees the same image, you get to compare completely different interpretations of it.
The best part is seeing everyone's answers
The question itself takes seconds.
The fun comes afterwards.
Answers land on your remote as they're submitted, not in a batch at the end, so you can start reading while the clock is still running. By the time the window closes you already know which ones are worth reading out.
Because that's the other thing: the captions only appear on your remote. The room can't see them. Which means the question doesn't really happen until you read the good ones aloud, and that turns you from a scorer into a compère for about ninety seconds. Read four or five, save the best for last, then award the point.
It also means nothing reaches the big screen unfiltered, so a workplace audience isn't a risk.
Some answers will be terrible. Some will be surprisingly clever. And occasionally someone comes up with one so good that the room knows it should win before you've finished saying it.
That's the moment you're looking for.
A traditional quiz gives you the satisfaction of knowing the answer. A creative question gives you the satisfaction of seeing what your players come up with.
You can use the same idea without captions
Once you stop thinking of Text Entry questions as "questions with a correct answer," there are plenty of other possibilities.
Best excuse. Show a picture of someone arriving dramatically late.
What's their excuse?
Name this product. Show a ridiculous fictional product.
What should this be called?
Continue the story. Show an unusual photograph.
What happened five minutes before this picture was taken?
Worst possible answer. Ask a deliberately serious-looking question and tell players to give the worst possible answer.
Write the headline. Show a strange image and ask players to write the newspaper headline.
In each case, there isn't one answer you're looking for.
You're looking for the answer that wins.
Give the points to the best answer
This is what makes it a quiz question rather than just an icebreaker.
Everyone gets a chance to submit an answer. Then you award the point.
Practically, you're just marking answers the way you would on any text question: accept the ones you like, reject the rest. And nothing stops you accepting more than one. If three captions are equally good, all three score. If the whole room was funny, the whole room scores.
That's worth knowing before you start agonising over a single winner. You don't have to pick one, and a question where four people score tends to leave the room happier than one where nine people get nothing.
The only thing you can't do that way is award different amounts, since everyone you accept gets the same points. If you want a clear first and second, that's a quick award, which is a Plus feature.
You can accept one, several, or everybody.
You can even make the scoring part of the joke:
Best answer gets 2 points. Second-best gets 1. Everyone else gets our sincere appreciation.
The rules are up to you.
Use it as one question, not a whole round
This isn't a quiz format. It's a question, and it works best dropped into an ordinary quiz rather than built out into a round of its own.
A whole round of caption competitions turns into a comedy night with scoring attached, and the joke wears out around the third one. A single one, arriving where nobody expected it, does far more.
Follow a difficult trivia question with something completely different. After a round of music questions, throw in a caption contest. After a picture round, ask players to invent a headline. After a serious company quiz question, ask:
What would be the worst possible slogan for our company?
It changes the energy in the room.
People stop trying to remember facts and start trying to make each other laugh.
That last example isn't only for quiz nights. A question nobody can revise for is a good way to get a meeting talking, which is the argument Microlearning in Team Sessions - Turning Passive Audiences into Participants makes at more length.
One catch when you build it
A Text Entry question still expects a correct answer, and QuizLinq won't let you leave the field empty. Your caption question doesn't have one.
So put something there deliberately, because whatever you type is what appears on the big screen at the reveal. That's a free joke most hosts waste on the word "n/a".
Try:
There is no correct answer. There is only the funniest one.
Whatever made the quizmaster laugh.
Ours was better. We're not showing you.
Or put in your own attempt at a caption, and let the room judge whether you should have entered your own competition.
Either way, the question needs a prompt, a picture, and a good judge.
That last one is you.
Show the picture. Ask for the caption. Let the best one win.