A Complete Noob's Guide to Mimir Quiz Leagues
More for us than for you.
The B612 Quiz League is set to start its 7th season in just a couple of hours. Is this your first time playing, and you don’t know what to expect? Or are you just playing a quiz league after a long absence and have forgotten how everything works?
Don’t worry, we’ve forgotten too. So this post should help both of us.
Here’s what’s in store.
Before your Quiz
During your Quiz
After your Quiz
Before Your Quiz
A season of the quiz league consists of a series of Game Weeks. Each Game Week starts on a Tuesday (or whenever you receive a mail from us) and ends the following Monday.
Checking the Draws
The mail announcing the start of a game week will typically just say something like “Draws are out, start scheduling your games!”
What does this mean?
Well, in this league we do Mimir quizzes. A mimir quiz is generally held amongst 4 players and is conducted by a reader. So each week you’ll be grouped with 3 other players in the league, and together you’ll play your first quiz!
The draws can be found here:
Actually, pretty much everything can be found there. You should probably bookmark the League Home Page for this season since you’ll be using it a lot.
The “Draws for the Week” button will take you to the Draw sheet, and you’ll be able to see whom you’re playing against this week. Their email addresses are visible for a reason. The four of you now need to get in touch and decide a time for your quiz.
Contacting the Players
By convention, the player in Seat 1 is expected to send out the first mail asking everyone for their time preferences. But time is of the essence, so if you happen to see the draws early, you can start the thread yourself, irrespective of which seat you’re in.
The ‘Start Mail Thread’ link next to your game is useful too. Click on it to skip the trouble of copying player emails. Always keep b612quizleague@gmail.com CC-ed in your mail threads, so we can help out if trouble arises.
The process of actually finding a time for your quiz is essentially just a process of dealing with other human beings. I have no right to teach you how to do this, but what I will remind you of is the importance of being nice. It is very very easy to be an asshole in quiz scheduling threads. Inevitably you will run into at least one person during this league who will make scheduling a nightmare for you. It is your responsibility to try and not be that person. Read the emails that came before yours. Understand the other players’ constraints. Share your time preferences clearly. Hopefully after 4 emails, you’ll have a time for your quiz.
There is a lot more that can be said about scheduling etiquette, and some of it has been said here.
Scheduling the Quiz
Once you’ve agreed upon a time, someone in your group needs to actually schedule the quiz. This means filling up a form to notify the league admins of the time you’ve picked, so we can make sure you have a reader assigned for your game. Like everything else, the scheduling form can be found on the League Home Page. Select your game from the dropdown, enter the time agreed upon and hit send. Your game will now appear in the list of scheduled games and a reader can sign up for it.
Try and schedule your quiz early in the week if possible. This gives us maximum time to ensure your game will have a reader, and if you finish early you can even volunteer to read other games! (and earn a discount for next season)
Once your quiz has been scheduled, you can forget about it until the day of the quiz itself. 10 minutes before your quiz is scheduled to start, check your game in the draw sheet again to see who your assigned reader is. Add them to your group’s mail thread to make coordination easy. Readers will generally bring their own zoom link, but if you have one handy you can let them know. In the worst case, use a free zoom link and reset after 40 minutes.
During Your Quiz
There have been elaborate writeups posted already explaining how a Mimir quiz works. The EMU folks wrote a nice one. But it might be easiest to just watch a quiz. There are quite a few on Youtube, but this one is a good pick because we go over the rules at the beginning of the video, and discuss some elements of strategy at the 11:14 mark.
If you are a new player, I strongly recommend that you tell the reader this at the start of the quiz. This achieves the dual purpose of informing the reader that they should go over the rules again, and informing the other players that they need to be kind when if you make a mistake.
Above all, be nice to your fellow quizzers. Remember that nobody in this league is playing for prizes (there aren’t any, lol), we’re all just in this for fun. If you’re even mildly nasty to someone, you can very easily tip the scales in favour of them deciding not to bother with quizzing again. Don’t do that. Be nice, and enjoy your quiz. At the end, remember to say bye to the other players and thank your reader.
A Note About B612 Readers
It is my opinion that a reader can pretty much make or break a quiz. A good reader sets the right tone and makes people feel like they can speak up, is gentle but firm with prompts and is generally responsible for the goings on in a quiz. A bad reader can completely ruin your evening.
I would love for B612 to be a league that consistently provides good reading experiences. That isn’t an objective criteria. Long-time quizzers will have varying preferences with regard to what they want their readers to do. Some like them fast, some like them slow, some like it when they add commentary and banter, and some hate exactly that. Whatever your preference, it’s okay to expect the very best when it comes to a B612 quiz. Use the feedback form to tell us what you like or dislike about your quizzes, and we promise we’ll read. You can choose to be anonymous, but if you leave your name that will allow us to get more info from you if needed.
After Your Quiz
After your quiz is completed, tell us what you thought of it! We’re all just doing this for the love of quizzing, so we’d love about your experiences. Like everything else, the Feedback form is also linked on the League Home Page.
Remember though, you can’t discuss the quiz itself with anyone else. Plenty of people will not yet have completed their quiz, so be careful about what you accidentally let slip.
Reading Other Games
Once you’re done with your own quiz, you can choose to sign up to read games for other groups. Check the list of scheduled games and see the ones that have an empty Reader column. If you see a time that works for you, you can add your name there and the quiz is all yours!
To read a quiz, you’ll need to have the FLQL Display Question plugin installed on your browser, and you’ll need the quiz set files, which you can request on the League Home Page under “Question Set for the Current Game Week”.
If you’ve never read a Mimir quiz before, it’s best to see some of our Guides first. If you’re still nervous, ping Harman or Vikas, or just email b612quizleague@gmail.com. We appreciate you volunteering to read, so we’ll be happy to walk you through the process if you need help.
Game Week Review
At the end of the game week, the results from all 60+ games will be compiled, analyzed and some stats published, along with a general review of how the quizzes played out. Writing questions is a terribly inexact science, so there’s usually a lot to talk about regarding what we got right or wrong.
There’s plenty of other potential for celebration when it comes to the end of the game week. Perhaps you’ll want to discuss the week’s questions with your fellow players. Perhaps you want to join an Open House session to celebrate the players who scored unusually well. Best of all, perhaps you want to share your own experiences with the questions, and how you were able to answer them. We’re still figuring out how best to enable this. Maybe you can help us decide.
That’s about all I can think of right now. If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to any of the league admin here, or by email, or on our Whatsapp groups.
It has been a while since our last season and we’re excited to be starting up again. Here’s to many weeks of some of the friendliest quizzing we’ve ever had. See you soon!