What is a quiz? Meaning, rules of the game, description

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:45

Fans of board and intellectual games often have a question about what a quiz is. This anglicism did not take root in the CIS countries, where the game itself, however, has been known for a very long time and even won the hearts of fans.

Under such an unusual term lies the usual quiz, well known to everyone who is fond of home games. The quiz mechanism is extremely simple - participants must answer questions from different areas of knowledge. But in fact, high variability makes the quiz one of the most difficult games, since it can differ significantly in rules, additional conditions, including those associated with the execution of actions, and a reward system. What is a quiz, really? Are these games relevant today?

The origin of the "quiz"

The question of what a quiz was was first raised in 1781. It was then that such a term began to be used in everyday life. The epithet was used to denote a strange or extraordinary person.

A little later, the word began to be used to denote the process of playing, enjoying the competition. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word “quiz” literally means “questioning”, “conversation by mutual inquiry”. This value is older than the original, since it appeared in 1843. By connectingthese two terms, you can get the key to understanding the word in its modern form.

"Legendary" past

There is a legend that for the first time the answer to the question of what is a quiz was given by a certain Richard Daley, the owner of a theater in Dublin. In 1791, he bet that he could introduce a new word into the English language within 24 hours. Later, he hired a mob of beggars who painted the whole of Dublin with the word "quiz", and the bewildered townspeople tortured each other, asking what it meant.

So the new term came into use. Later, a synonym for the poll began to be used as a common noun to refer to a board game due to the specifics of the latter. Thus, the quiz game filled the whole world.

Russian answer

The closest in meaning to "quiz" in Russian is the usual word "quiz". This term first appeared in 1928 in the Ogonyok magazine. Mikhail Koltsov, who at that time worked in the editorial office, came up with such a sonorous name for a special block in the magazine, full of puzzles, riddles, charades and crossword puzzles. The writer of the latter was a certain Viktor Mikulin, who also worked in Ogonyok, and the word "quiz" came from his name.

Later, the term was found to have slightly different roots - from the Latins. "Victor" means "winner". The word quickly came into use and began to refer to various kinds of board games in which it was necessary to answer questions from different blocks of knowledge.

The formation of the game

Since 1975the quiz is closely associated with the question-answer game. At first, such games were held in closed companies, questions were written down on cards, after which a group of people tried to answer in turn, thereby earning points.

Later the quiz became popular on TV as well. So the quiz has gained a mass character and real, often quite expensive, prizes. With the advent of the Internet, the quiz moved into the online space, and now everyone has the opportunity to play a game with friends or strangers. For example, there is a site on the web dedicated to a logo quiz, where participants need to name a brand based on a picture depicting its logo.

World record

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest quiz took place in Ghent, Belgium. More than 2 thousand people took part in it. The audience was divided into groups, after which, by selection, the participants were eliminated on the way to the final.

Today the number of quiz participants is unlimited. For example, tens and even hundreds of people can play in jabber chat at the same time, not to mention entire sites with an audience of several tens of thousands of participants. Some fans of quizzes gather in a kind of "interest clubs", creating groups on social networks. With constant access to the Internet, finding opponents for a quiz game is no longer a problem. The game "quiz logo", for example, has a considerable number of fans.

Rules and restrictions

The quiz provides the only inviolable rule - the basis of the game isquestion-and-answer mechanism. Depending on the specifics, the further process has a number of differences. So, for example, brainstorm means finding an answer through an oral meeting within the team.

There are other options when one person answers, and he is forced to use only his knowledge. There is, however, also a kind of quiz, when the question and answers are riddles, or the players are forced to present their version to the host in a playful way.

In addition, the quiz can vary significantly depending on the setting, prizes, player capabilities, their number, as well as prizes. Ultimately, there are a huge variety of quiz games, and this kind of game does not have strict rules.

Popular in the CIS program “What? Where? When? is also a variant of the quiz. This board game may not have such an impressive history as, for example, chess, but it has just as many fans.

The quiz remains an interesting pastime to this day, being both a friendly and quite professional competition.