Q. My company publishes a monthly newsletter for employees. My boss asked me to write a fun quiz. I’m not exactly a stand-up comic. Aid!
A. Ah, the fun quiz. You’re lucky! It’s not often that a company has an official sense of humor that it’s willing to display for everyone to read. This is going to be a great task for you!
A funny test is usually one where the questions and answers have no real purpose other than to make the test taker laugh. Although almost anything goes, there are some taboo topics. Offhand I would say that anything that makes fun of a specific person or group of people, as well as anything that is anti-Semitic, racial, sexual, political, or religious, should be off limits. Remember, what one person thinks is funny may offend another. Even seemingly innocent topics like “peasant” or “peasant” jokes may not be funny to someone who lives in the mountains or the Deep South (like me).
You can think of a fun quiz as a series of one-liners with multiple-choice key phrases. Since you’re writing for a company publication, you have an “affinity group” built in, as there are bound to be some common company-related topics that could turn into something fun.
For example, if you work for a software development company, you might have a question that is:
Which is longer: a CEO’s week or a programmer’s week?
If you don’t laugh, you have never been told by a programmer that the project will be ready in a week.
You need to walk a fine line even when using themes like this in your fun quiz. Let’s say your company just posted a fourth-quarter loss because a new software product missed its release date by a “developer’s week.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you’re about to upset a lot of people if you add that question to your fun quiz.
Try to avoid tired jokes or clichés. A fun quiz should be fun, not boring. For example, still in the software train of thought, a question like…
Q. How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? A. None. They don’t do hardware.
…is older than the mystery meat in that Tupperware container in the back of the dining room refrigerator. No one is going to laugh at that. No laughter = no fun quiz!
The best thing you can do is keep an eye out for fun and safe things to make fun of and then write a fun quiz question. My advice is to start right now and not wait until an hour before the deadline. The only thing less fun than a boring fun quiz is that it doesn’t have any fun quizzes!