Quizzing in Belgium or Belgian Style Quizzing is the Belgian variant of the British Pub Quiz Nights or Quiz Bowls. The mind sport has a long tradition in Belgian (though, mostly Flemish) culture and is a popular pastime. Similar to a Pub quiz or a Quiz Bowl, it's a team competition in which the team that answers the most questions correctly wins the quiz. Questions are mainly pure knowledge questions on all topics of human knowledge, such as history, geography, arts & culture, media, literature, film, music, theatre, science, nature, sports etc... Due to some high level competitions, Belgian Style Quizzing has become internationally renowned for its difficult question setting.
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Belgian Quiz Format
Although the Belgian quiz format is not fixed and quiz organizations will try to be as inventive as possible to maximize the quizzing pleasure, a typical Belgian Style quiz will go somewhat as follows:
A quiz is played by 20-50 teams of 4-6 people each. It typically starts at 8pm and finishes around 12pm. A quiz is played in rounds of 10-15 questions each and features 140-180 questions in total. Most questions are read out loud, sometimes supported by handout material and audio tracks, possibly video material shown on a projection screen. Each team writes down their best and final answers on the provided answer sheets, which are collected at the end of each round. Typically, a round ends with a music track and the last question will be 'name the artist', which provides some time to fill in the last blanks. These answer sheets are corrected by the jury, and subtotals are read out a couple of times as the evening progresses. Plain rounds feature questions that are unrelated, but vary in covered topics. A 10-question round will feature e.g. one question each on history, geography, arts and culture, literature, media, sports, cinema, science, nature, and music. Apart from these ‘plain’ rounds a wide range of 'special rounds' are played. Some examples:
Quiz Venues
Question setting
It's not difficult to come up with questions that are hard, or nearly impossible to answer. The key to the success of Belgian style quizzing is the ability of a lot of organizing teams to come up with a set of questions that are both interesting, amusing and solvable at the same time (at least by a few people in the room). Generally, the goal is to have the winning team score around 90%, while the last teams still score 50%. Teams are warned in advance on the difficulty level.
Trivia
Quizzes that feature more than a few questions on controversial, sordid, or adult topics are sometimes referred to as 'Belgian Style Quizzing', due to the supposed popularity of these topics in Belgian quizzes. However, although some Belgian quizzes indeed include a few of these questions, Belgian quizzers claim the image has surpassed reality.