Exciting tiebreak end to a quiz

November 4, 2007 5:19 AM

I'm hosting a quiz soon, with three teams of three playing each other and an audience watching. I want a good tiebreak competition. Something slightly physical, not more questions!

Last time we did this we got the participants (university maths lecturers) to build as tall a tower as they could, using straws, within 3 minutes. The year before we had them following the directions to the "time warp". I'm wanting something similar, but not too embarrassing for them. The audience will be their students and colleagues. The other rounds will be fairly normal, general knowledge, music, pictionary etc, so i want this to be something slightly out the ordinary. Thanks!

posted by kg to grab bag (9 comments total)

Milk drinking or syrup drinking competition.
posted by null terminated at 5:28 AM on November 4, 2007

At a trivia night I was at, one of the 'special rounds' involved a pair from each team up on stage, and the MC calling out sexual positions - last pair to assume the position was out.
Is that too embarrassing?
posted by jacalata at 6:42 AM on November 4, 2007

Maybe take a look at this website that has a lot of summer camp games? I'll bet you could find something cool on there. Maybe the Backwards Scotsman?
posted by MsMolly at 7:07 AM on November 4, 2007

Pictionary, charades, or whistling or humming the tune of a song for one's teammates to identify, are all good.

There's an excellent game called "Cranium" you should look into. It has multiple categories of activity, including quiz questions, spelling (backwards), definitions, pictionary, pictionary where the picture is drawn with eyes closed, hum or whistle a tune, charades, and a few others.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 7:08 AM on November 4, 2007

Best Tarzan impersonation.

They did this at a quiz night I attended once.

I won.
posted by Jimbob at 8:12 AM on November 4, 2007

give each team a dozen hard-boiled eggs, first team to eat them all wins.
posted by bruce at 8:59 AM on November 4, 2007

oh, and for extra laughs, one out of the twelve eggs for each team is still raw (they're all still in their shells, and you don't tell the teams in advance). you might get some good footage for youtube out of this.
posted by bruce at 9:03 AM on November 4, 2007

who can get the longest piece of peel off an orange (no kidding, someone managed over 2 metres at a quiz i hosted once. she had great nails)

who can build the tallest spaghetti tower, or a spaghetti structure than can hold the heaviest weight... the weight one is fun as you can test the structures to destruction

whose paper aeroplane goes farthest

who can draw the best mona lisa (this can actually be very funny)
posted by handee at 9:15 AM on November 4, 2007

I strongly advise against any eating contests, as not only can this make a contestant sick, it can also leave you open to lawsuits. I like the Mona Lisa idea. Perhaps another idea is to assign each team a famous sitcom (I Love Lucy, Seinfeld, All in the Family, etc) and give them 10 minutes or so to construct a scene using dialog and characterizations that would make them recognizable to the audience.
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:59 AM on November 4, 2007