How to Create a Quiz

(Last Updated On: March 27, 2019)

Create a quiz – for free.

Have you always wanted to create a quiz on Sporcle, but weren’t sure how to get started? This guide is for you! Read through the instructions below, contribute a quiz, and you’ll be a great quizmaker before you know it. Sporcle has several different types of quizzes you can create, but we will get started with the most basic quiz type – the Classic (list-based) quiz.

First thing First

Before you can create a quiz, you’ll need an account on Sporcle. It’s free and easy to sign up. Just go to our sign up page and create an account.

Getting Set Up

If this is your very first time, you’ll need to accept our quiz creation terms of service before you can start making your quiz.

Once you’ve accepted the terms, navigate to the Game Creation Center and click the orange ‘Create a Sporcle Quiz’ button. You should see a screen like the one below.

create a quiz All you need to do is enter some basic information about the quiz you’re making.

Game Name
Start by typing in the name of your quiz.

Similar Games
If your quiz has already been made by another user, it will display in the ‘Similar Games’ box below.

Game Type
For ‘Game Type’ we’re going to choose ‘Classic’.

After selecting your game type click the ‘Create Game’ button.

Game Info

The Game Info tab has quite a bit of display information you can change. To keep things simple, however, we’ve outlined the most basic settings. The others are used for quizzes with more advanced formats.

Classic_Guide_1 Game Type
We’ve already set the game type to ‘Classic’ on the previous screen, but if you made a mistake, select ‘Classic’ in this dropdown menu.

Game Name
Game Name has also been filled-in from the previous screen, but if you’d like to tweak it, you can do so using this field.

Game Timer
Choose how many minutes you’d like your game to last before it ends. A good rule of thumb for a classic quiz is about 12 seconds per answer. This quiz has 17 answers, so 4 minutes is plenty of time. If you’re not sure how long your quiz is going be, leave it at 10 minutes (default setting.)

Description
By default, the words ‘Can you name the’ followed by your quiz title are filled in here. You may need to tweak this slightly for wording or capitalization, but you’ll want to make sure it’s clear what a potential quiz-taker is answering.

Category
Choose one of Sporcle’s categories your quiz fits into. If you’re not sure, Miscellaneous is a good default choice. You can always change this later if you’d like. After you’re done, hit ‘Save Changes’ and you’re ready to move on to the next step.

Options

The options tab allows quizmakers to customize the way a quiz behaves. Since we’re making a basic quiz, you can skip this tab for now. If you want to create a quiz that is a bit more involved, you can revisit this tab.

Data

This is where you’ll input all your quiz information. Both hints and answers are entered here.

Classic_Guide_2The left column is for hints, and the middle column is where answers should be put. No need to save, each field is saved automatically.

Alternate Answers
The most important thing to note about the answer column is that alternate answers/spellings can be added after a / symbol. For example, if Blade Runner had an alternate title of Blade Jogger, you would put the following text in the answer field: Blade Runner/Blade Jogger.

This way, someone taking the quiz can enter either answer and have it counted as correct.

Bonus Answers
If you want to put in an answer that is not part of the quiz, but you think may be guessed, you can add a ‘Bonus answer’. Bonus answers are not counted in the score, but they are triggered when a user types one in. To do this, enter the hint and answer in the normal way, but add ‘ee’ to the 3rd column. In this case, Star Wars was originally a two-word movie, but over time has been lengthened to fit in with the rest of the series, so it was added as a bonus.

Style

Sporcle quizzes have a basic color scheme by default. If you’d like to make a few tweaks, though, the Style tab is where you should go.

Classic_guide_3 There are plenty of options here, but to keep things simple, we’re just going to add a little color to our hint background and answer background.

Hint Background
For hints, you’ll want to choose a dark background color, with white text, as that will be the easiest to read. There are many great color suggestion sites that can help you pick out a color that is complementary to your answer background. Here we chose a dark purple by clicking on the color code and choosing a purple from the palette.

Answer Background
To complement the darker hint background, it’s a good idea to use a lighter color on the answer column, which makes everything easier to read. Just pick a color using the palette again.

When you’re finished picking your colors, click ‘Save Styles’.

Tags

Some tags are added automatically when you contribute a quiz, but on this tab you can search for specific tags to add. This will make your quiz easier to find, and more likely to be played. Here we’re adding the Actor, Harrison Ford, and Movie Title tags.

CLassic_Guide_4

Finish Up

When you feel like your quiz is finished and ready to be contributed, the Finish Up tab is where you go to make it happen.

Classic_Guide_5
You have two options when you’re finished with a quiz. You can release it as Public or Private
Private
A private quiz will not display on your profile, and can only be played when you send the link to another user. Quizzes you make for friends and family, or that are silly, should be made private.
Public
This quiz will be released publicly to the Sporcle community and you will receive lots of feedback whatever you do. It will display in your profile and notify any friends you have that you’ve released a new quiz, so make sure everything is as polished as can be before clicking that button.

Congratulations! You Learned How To Create a Quiz.

After all that work, you’ve contributed your first classic Sporcle quiz, it should look a lot like the one below.

classic quiz

If you’re interested in learning how to create a quiz of another type, be sure to read our other guides. We also have a set of quiz creation video tutorials on our Youtube page, including a Classic quiz walkthrough. You’ll be on the quizmaster leaderboards in no time!

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