How I write the Los Angeles Times News Quiz

Quiz

Adam Tschorn March 27, 2024

When the Los Angeles Times decided to launch its version of a news quiz earlier this year, I suddenly found myself tapped to serve as quizmaster the person responsible for coming up with each week’s questions. While that may seem random, it’s not.

Before landing at the paper, I spent some time as a game-show Q&A man. I wrote for the Maury Povich-hosted remake of “Twenty One” and a couple of incarnations of “Weakest Link,” among others. Although all the questions I’ve written over the years are a blur at this point, I do remember, with absolute clarity, the first question that would come my way when I told someone what I did for work: “How do you do

that

?”

It seemed like an odd question for something that, after a few weeks, took on such a comfortable cadence it seemed like second nature.

For most of us in the writers’ room, each day would begin with a scan of as many daily newspapers as we could get our hands on. Part of this was in search of topical and accessible question fodder. But it also was motivated by a desire to meet our daily question quota, and riffing off the news of the day lessened the chances one of us would accidentally duplicate (or worse yet, give away the answer to) a question that already existed in the ever-growing database. (The day after a Hollywood awards shows was always a mad dash to gin up those superlative questions the youngest, oldest, most, least type questions.)

Creating the Los Angeles Times News Quiz is a lot like that just with a single newspaper (this one) as source material. Because each week’s quiz draws on stories that appeared either in print or online over the previous seven days, I start each morning by reading the emailed digital version of the daily paper, followed by a spin through the website section by section. (Sometimes a story that’s published online might fall outside of the one-week window, but if it later appears in print, it’s fair game!)

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While just about any story worth my Times colleagues’ time and effort

could

be turned into a quiz question, not every one

should

be. Part of that’s because, to differentiate our news quiz from the many, many other ones out there, I’m looking for questions that are mostly (but not exclusively) California-focused. But it’s also because I want this to be fun and, when appropriate, funny. Quizzing readers about the names of Big Bear’s bald eagle couple or the new Clippers logo can be both.

Asking about the death toll in a recent avalanche is neither. That’s why I tend to skew toward the lighthearted with the topics I turn into questions.

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Because these are multiple-choice questions meaning I’m giving you the actual answer in there somewhere most of my time is spent coming up with three wrong answers that seem like they absolutely could be the right answer. And they might make you chuckle a little bit

at

the same time. (For those of you keeping count, that’s 30 plausible wrong answers per week.)

Once all those boxes are ticked and corners turned, the quiz questions go through the same editing and copy editing process as any other story published by The Times before being posted early Friday morning.

A few hours later, I crack open the e-newspaper and start all over again.

Combining my TV game-show skills with my journalism career has turned out to be a lot of fun. The only thing I really miss is seeing the questions I’ve crafted be played in a live game-show format.

As it turns out, I won’t have to quit my day job to get my live-game fix. The folks at Molly Malone’s Irish Pub in the Fairfax District (one of my top-recommended bar trivia haunts in the city) are graciously allowing us to play an expanded, in-person version of the Los Angeles Times News Quiz on April 10 as part of their regularly scheduled Wednesday-night game.

After that, it’s on to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books for another in-person game on April 20.

To get your Q&A muscles limbered up in preparation, sign up for our Essential California newsletter,

and you’ll find a link to the quiz of the week at the bottom of each Saturday’s newsletter.

Are you ready to have some fun? I am. So let’s get started!

” Ask a Reporter: Inside the L.A. Times News Quiz,” at Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on the USC campus at 2:15 p.m. April 20.