A window into : What makes a great quiz question

How the best quiz questions move beyond rote memory to reward intuition, discrimination, and the thrill of the "aha!" moment

This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. This month, we used the prompt, ‘A Window Into…’. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

For most Indians, quizzing is a school memory shaped by the Bournvita Quiz Contest and KBC. While many lose touch with this world after entering the workforce, the internet has birthed 'Open Quizzing'—vibrant, niche communities like the Karnataka Quiz Association (KQA) in Bangalore. As both a question setter and participant, I’ve often thought about what transforms a simple fact into a truly great question.

The mind when attempting a quiz question is a curious thing.A truly well crafted quiz question engages all aspects of the mind - speed of reading and comprehension, the judgement to evaluate and choose the part of the question which makes most sense to explore and finally, knowledge and recall. Let me explain.

Workout-ability - the key to a great quiz question

Not all quiz questions are the same. Compare 'Who was India’s first president?' to a 'workoutable' question. The former is binary—you either know it or you don't. The latter provides a trail of clues that leads the participant to the answer, like the one below:

One way of knowing the answer is to have eaten Choy sum in oyster sauce or sweet & sour pork - that is ‘bringing your lived experience’ to Quizzing. But I haven’t and hence that part of the question didn’t help me. Instead, I focused on the cuisine originating in the Pearl River Delta and the map with the region highlighted in green. In this format I had 30 seconds to answer so I had to make up my mind quickly.From the map it is clear that the area is in Southern China.The Chinese language has two variants, Mandarin which is the official Chinese version spoken in the North around Beijing and Cantonese which is spoken in the south. I had heard of Cantonese noodles so put all these thoughts together to answer - Cantonese - which turned out to be the right answer!

In essence, “workout-ability” allows for multiple ways of arriving at the answer. At the outset, the above question might seem like a ‘food’ question but can also be answered using knowledge of Geography.

Knowledge, Discrimination and Recall also crucial to answering

Ultimately, a workout-able question is only one half of the equation. The quizzer also needs to decide which facts that he knows should he brought in for the question. Consider the below question on a puckered, striped fabric from colonial India (pictured below), with a Persian name meaning ‘milk and sugar’.

The key to answering this question is to figure out the Persian words for Milk and Sugar. The fact that this originated in colonial India means this might be words familiar to me. Sugar is Cheeni but that word doesn’t fit because Cheeni is of chinese origin not Persian. So the word might be a derivative of the other word for sugar which is ‘Shakkar’ ultimately from Sanskrit ‘Sharkara’. Coming to milk, this word will not be ‘doodh / dugdha’ because the British will find that a mouthful. What’s the other word for milk? - it might possibly be Sanskrit Kshira but would that be the same in Persian. I decided to take a chance to get - Kshira-Shakkar - which is still a mouthful. But then suddenly it dawned on me because I had heard the term somewhere - Kshira is Seer and Shakkar is Sucker - Seersucker which I managed to blurt out in the last second!

As you see, This required Knowledge (synonyms for milk/sugar), Discrimination (choosing Persian roots over others), and Recall (linking the derivation to a known term). This deduction becomes instinctive with practice and offers a massive rush when you hit the mark under pressure.

A great quiz question isn't a dead end; it’s a puzzle box. By rewarding deduction over rote memory, it transforms a static fact into a dynamic mental chase. So, next time you’re stumped, don't give up—look for the clues. The "aha!" moment is always worth the effort!

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Other Essays on ‘A Window into…’ from the Bangalore Substack Writers Group below

A window into a life on a sabbatical by Ritika Arora, Ritika Arora – Medium

A window into a screen-less day by Saniya Zehra Saniya’s Substack

Three Windows in a Week By Nidhi, General In Her Labyrinth

A window into Kalimpong by Karthik Ballu, Reading This World by Karthik

A window into permission for freedom: The FIRE Number by Shruti Soumya, Same Here

A window into a person who shivers on stage by Mihir Chate, Mihir’s Substack

A window into bendy morals by Amit Kumar, EarlyNotes

A window into the vegetable market by Rakhi Kurup , Rakhi’s Substack

A window into the fixity and flux by Amit Charles

Still Looking By Spandana, Spandana’s Substack

The window that looks back, by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt