Guidelines for Quiz Creation
Important: ALL of the following sets of
guidelines are
relevant for the
category you would like to submit to. Please read all of them carefully
and keep them in mind as you develop your quiz. Thanks!
The following sets of guidelines apply to quizzes created in
Brain Teasers.
Guidelines for Brain Teasers
These instructions complement and expand upon the Quiz Creation Guidelines you'll see in the yellow section of the quiz template. For specific guidelines to each Brain Teaser subcategory, please check the yellow section. Brain Teasers can be a difficult category to write quizzes for. It's a good idea to play twenty quizzes or more in the subcategory you'd like to write for before starting your quiz.
*No punctuation in any Fill in the Blank (FITB) answer. Different keyboards around the world produce different same characters for the same symbol. This means a player with a different keyboard could type a correct answer but be marked as incorrect. This unfairly penalises the player and is why Funtrivia has banned punctuation. You may find quizzes which do have punctuation. These are old quizzes written prior to the no punctuation rule. It's unfair to the authors to delete them so you'll still see them, but it doesn't mean we now allow punctuation.
You cannot write an answer without punctuation, e.g. 'dont' for 'don't', as it's not correct. If there are two correct ways to spell a word and one of those ways includes punctuation (e.g. deckchair and deck-chair), then the question will be disallowed. Having the answer of 'deckchair' without it's hyphenated counterpart means that players who enter the correct, hyphenated answer will be penalised.
*There is no need to write both upper and lower case for the same answer, e.g. France and france. The system will see FRANCE, france, FRAnce, FrAnCe fraNCE etc. in the same way.
*Bear in mind that UK and US English have differences and both answers should be entered. If an answer is 'color', you should enter the alternative answer of colour (the UK spelling) and vice versa.
To enter two possible answers, simply separate them with an ampersand (&). For example, to enter Tom and Harry as answers, enter Tom&Harry or Tom & Harry.
*Answers which are complete sentences and would normally require punctuation are not useable. The exception to this rule is movie, book, song titles etc. as long as they don't have punctuation normally (e.g. 'Oliver!').
This doesn't mean you can't use the question, but you will need to modify it. For example, you wanted the answer to be 'Actions speak louder than words.' in an In Other Words quiz. That sentence would normally require punctuation and you can't use it. Instead, ask for one word of the sentence. You could modify the question to ask:
'In the phrase 'Deeds verbalise more voluminously than distinct units of languages', which word would replace 'deeds'?
The player still has to recognise the phrase and convert the words 'deeds' into 'actions'.
The four rules above apply to FunTrivia as a whole.
*Every quiz will be available to play in HTML, but not all subcategories of Brain Teasers can be played in the other two formats. See the yellow template for specific instructions, if any, for that subcategory.
*No more than six words per FITB answer please. Asking for more typing increases the chances of a typo, can lead to player frustration and dissatisfaction and possibly lower ratings for your quiz. This rule varies across FunTrivia, so if writing a quiz for a different category, check each category's guidelines first.
*Brain Teaser quizzes should be answerable with a reasonable general knowledge and vocabulary. This isn't the place to ask who won the Best Actor in a Comedy Golden Globe in 1975 or the name of the dog which won Best in Show at Crufts, 1955. Please remember that players come from every country around the world and they may not know that Myrtle Fudgeknuckle starred in your favourite TV show of the 1950s which was only on air for 3 months on a local station.
*Several FunTrivia categories have their own WordPlay subcategories. These are:
Entertainment
For Children (a limited selection of Wordplay quizzes)
Geography
Literature
Movies
Music
Sports
Television
Video Games
Any quizzes with an dominant theme lending itself to any of these categories will be moved. A quiz with a mixture of subject matters including those above is fine.
*For the vast majority of Brain Teaser categories, questions are best asked as a definition rather than filling in a blank in a sentence. These quizzes are designed to 'tease' a player's brain to some extent rather than be a 'gimme' score. Players generally LIKE a challenge.
*In general, a good FITB question will have only one possible answer. If you ask the question 'Who gave birth to you?' the answer could be 'mother', 'my mother', 'mummy', 'my mother', 'mommy' 'my Ma' etc.
*All Brain Teaser questions now require at least one sentence of Interesting Information (II). You will see older quizzes without any II but they were written before this requirement was initiated. Be imaginative with the II. Give the definition of the answer, a quote using the word in some form, movie titles, alternate meanings of the word, where the word originated, etc.
*There are a few "How to Write ..." quizzes in Brain Teasers, found on the main Brain Teasers page. These may give you some extra guidance and tips.
*A dictionary is your best friend when writing Brain Teaser quizzes. Not only can you check the spelling of your answers (to eliminate any hyphenated words or check for variant spellings), it can be a source of new material for you.
Please do not write or submit a quiz until you have played a few games and are familiar with Quiz Creation Guidelines. Link to the Quiz Authoring Q&A forum.
These guidelines were updated May, 2014.