User:Hommeles/Quizzing in Belgium

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 passtime, especially on weekend nights. 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 knowlegde, such as history, geography, arts & culture, media (film, music, theatre), science, nature, etc... Due to some high level competitions, Belgian Style Quizzing has become internationally renowned for its difficult question setting.

Trivia
Quizzes that feature (quite a lot of) 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.

Quiz Organisations
Most quizzes are organised by local

Who organizes these quizzes? Well, that varies a lot. Easier quizzes can be organized by a local football team (soccer obviously!), a school or a city council. In that case they would use their own buildings, for instance a community center or a cafeteria. Tougher quizzes are organized by quiz teams themselves who rent, for instance, a community center for an evening. In Belgium this is possible for something like 75 to 200 Euro (so some 90 to 250 US$). In other countries it’s normally more expensive.

As for Belgium, and more in particular Flanders, dozens of quizzes are organized every weekend which are open to all. Not bad for a region with an area comparable to that of Delaware (a selection of those can be found in the Belgian Quiz Calendar).

In Belgium, quiz is seen as a team-sport. Most quizzes are for teams of 4 or 5 per team. An average quiz would have 40 of such teams competing. So that means that every weekend some 5000 people quiz in Flanders.

Some quizzes are easy, some are relatively hard and some are very hard. The 12 most prestigious (and often hardest) quizzes are grouped in a mini-competition called the ‘Superprestige’ and winning that competition is one of the most acclaimed trophies in quizzing in Belgium. Many of the questions of these “hard” quizzes can be found here (albeit in Dutch). One is in English because it was part of the European Championships in 2004.

The format is normally something like this: 10 to 15 questions are read, possibly with pictures, music tracks or video added. The teams write down their answers on the provided answer sheets. After each round the papers are collected, the correct answers are read out and the sheets are corrected by a jury while the second round takes place. Normally 100-150 questions on an evening for a quiz that starts at 8pm and ends around midnight. Apart from these ‘plain’ rounds we use ABC-rounds (in which 26 questions are asked, each starting with another letter of the alphabet), link rounds (every answer is also a world capital, for instance), super-rounds and many other formats.

All quiz results are grouped together in one ranking (compare it to the ATP ranking in tennis). In that ranking some 550 teams have earned points and many more are trying to be part of the ranking. The current ranking (August 1, 2006) can be found here.