In the EMU Quiz League, you will be playing the MIMIR format which is designed to give every player an equal chance in succeeding in the absence of another equaliser such as “the pounce” (which is a form of play in which quizzers can simultaneously and discreetly answer to the quiz-setter/proctor before individual turns). Played by four players, each game is divided into four rounds consisting of three consecutive questions for each player in every round, totalling 48 questions.
Questions, Quads and Themes
The 48 questions are divided into 12 “quads”. A quad is a set of four questions covering the same theme or topic. For example, desserts which gave their name to android operating systems. Each quad consists of questions of four difficulty levels — from the easiest to the most difficult, which are distributed throughout the players’ seats in a way that everybody gets an equal number of questions of each difficulty level (i.e. 3 each of Level 1, L2, L3 and L4), with everybody getting one direct question of each quad. For details on how our difficulty rating is done, check out this article.
This quiz league is designed in such a way that it covers a wide array of subjects to satisfy everyone’s taste, every week. For this reason, the 12 quad themes for each week are: Physical geography; History and Literature; Biology; Chemistry; Physics; Engineering and Technology; Math; Movies and TV; Music, Art and Architecture; Mythbusting; Social Science and Psychology; and Wildlife (Note that it is a replacement for the theme ‘Home and Hobbies’ in the first season. Read this article to know the reasons why it was changed). All quads and questions will at least have a tangential connection to nature, science and technology.
Besides the 48 questions, every week will contain at least two extra questions in case one the questions become unusable because of a mistake made by the player or reader (eg: a reader accepting the wrong answer because the reader misheard a player, and then announced the right answer). So, every week will feature at least 50 questions. We used to have tiebreaker questions and a Hawkeye question (closest to correct number) which we removed immediately after the introduction of the Adjusted Differential Scores (ADS) in game-week 2 of season 1.
Why 48 questions?
Why are we going with 48 questions instead of 60 or 64 questions like other MIMIR leagues? Because it gives us the opportunity to help the players savour each question, instead of rushing through them. The smaller number of questions means that in each week, we will feature two quads which are accompanied by videos/audio/animations, and most of the rest will feature images. The smaller number also means that we can make some questions a little longer than usual (not to bore, but to excite, and make it a more involved experience). And even after all this, you will still be able to finish it within one hour or less.
Fixtures
Note that the description of the process given here is tentative, and may change depending on the number of participants for Season 2.
Every league differs in the method they use for creating the fixtures for a game-week. We use our own methods. During the first game-week, we consider three main aspects while randomising player groups (which makes it a stratified semi-random process):
Whether the player is playing the League for the first time. If yes, they will be matched with players who have already played the League before, so that they will have help from the experienced players in understanding the game-play.
Whether the players are from radically different time-zones which makes it difficult to schedule games. We match players within time-zones that allow a reasonable window for finding a common time.
Whether any players in a match-up are regular readers or expressed interest in reading. We will group all such players together within games, so that their games finish earlier in the week, allowing them to read more games.
From the second game-week onwards, we will attempt to match players in such a way that the players will get to play with a wider variety of players. However, during the later game-weeks, this task will be impossible if the total number of players are relatively lower (such as a 100 players), and players who have faced off each other in an earlier game will likely be matched again.
For the second game-week, we arrange the players by their (overall) ADS, and split them into two tiers, after which they are semi-randomly clubbed into groups of four. We will ignore point 1 as the players will be familiar with the game-play by the second game-week. But, we will consider points 2 and 3 within these two groups. For the third and fourth game-week, players will be split into three tiers based on their overall ADS, and then matched randomly. At this point of time, we will likely ignore point 2 and 3, since having more restriction on matching will lead to more players playing the same people again and again.
For the fifth and sixth game-week, players will be split into four groups based on their overall ADS, and then randomly matched. We won’t indicate these tiers used for preparing fixtures in the Public Scoreboard until game-week 7. For the seventh game-week, players will be split into five groups based on their overall ADS, and then randomly matched. For the eight (final) game-week, there will be 5 tiers, but there will be no randomisation. The players will be matched by their overall ADS, and clubbed into groups of four (the first four in the first game, the next four in the second game and so on).
Seating order, Gameplay and Bonus Attempts
The seating order is selected at random before the game (fixtures available here), but is dynamic during the gameplay as it is adjusted based on the number of bonus attempts (BAs) i.e. passed questions attempted, to ensure impartiality and to enable strategic gameplay. The direct questions do not count as a BA. The player with more BAs will be behind players with less BAs in the seating order. If BAs are the same, fixture seating order is considered by the scoring app.
Points and Timer
The person in front of the passing order receives their direct questions, which each earns them a point, if answered correctly. If they answer incorrectly, they will not receive any negative points, however, the question is passed on to the next in the passing order. Passed questions also earn players 1 point each. Note that these simple points will be converted to the ADS at the end of the game-week. For direct questions, every player will have 30 seconds to answer immediately after the proctor finishes reading the question, and for passed questions, every player will have 5 seconds to answer. If one or more people are absent, then their questions are read, and other players are given 15 seconds to think, and it passes to whomever is next in the line. The next in line can also pounce with an answer before the 15 seconds is over.
Formatting
If the questions has boldened portions, it can mean i) that its a clue to the answer ii) that it is the question (to aid easier reading). If the questions have italicised portions, i) it can mean that they are proper nouns like name of books or movies ii) they are foreshadowing clues in between questions of a quad. For example, in Season 1 Week 3, we had a quad where the first three questions had the animal names vole, dhole, and polecat italicised. And the final question in the quad had Naked Mole Rat as the answer. So, the quad was ‘Fiction with mammals having 'ole' nomenclature’. If players pay attention, the foreshadowing will help to answer the last question. iii) they are scientific names/latin names.
We use the word BLANKS instead of putting actual blanks (like this -_ _ _ _ _ _) for hiding the answers or clues, and the number of letters or other characters within those blanks may also be given depending on the question difficulty. From a survey amongst quizzers, we found that people preferred the word BLANK over X or Y. Therefore, we will be using the words BLANK, BLANK1, BLANK2 etc instead of X, Y etc in a lot of the questions (but X, Y etc. will be used occasionally). We use SI units for measurements unless the question or answer requires the use of another system of measurement. We follow one style of English (British English for the second season), only for the purpose of consistency, and not of any preference for one style.
Repeats and Clarifications
While every player will be able to read the questions displayed on the screen as well as listen to the questions being dictated by the proctor, there may be situations in which repeats of the question is necessary. Once the question is read, the timer starts, and the first player has unlimited chances to ask for repeats, spelling, pronunciation or any other clarifications (but not translations or meanings of words within the questions) of/regarding the whole question or parts of it, due to potential issues such as misreading or incomprehensible accents.
These repeats and/or clarifications should be done quickly so as to not waste time, and all of it will be carried out within the allocated 30 seconds. The rest of the players don’t have any chances for repeats and/or clarifications due to chances of stalling for time. The first player can strategise by passing immediately after the question is read if they are sure that they don’t know the answer to prevent other players from gaining more time for thinking. Videos and audio will only be played once unless all the players ask for a repeat, in which case, one and only one more repeat is allowed. In case of glitches due to bad connectivity, they can be played again.
Example game
Darwin, Schrödinger, Curie and Lovelace are playing a game with the same sequence as the seating order. The first question is ‘Which English mathematician and inventor is credited with having proposed the first automatic digital computer?’. Darwin, who doesn’t know the answer quickly passes to give less time for others to think, and he receives no point; it passes to Schrödinger who answers ‘Copernicus’ and he gets no point either, along with a BA; it then passes to Curie who ‘preserves the attempt’ (does not answer) to avoid a BA since she is pretty sure that she doesn’t know the answer; which finally passes to Lovelace who answers Babbage and gets a point (normally surnames alone are acceptable unless specified).
To see examples of this format in action, you can check out our YouTube channel.