Miles Glaspole, on the set of ‘ Australian Mastermind’

Hello and welcome to Part Two of my four-part interview with Mastermind Australia Grand Champion – and TikTok 10 creator – Miles Glaspole. when we left off last week, Miles and I had just started chatting about writing quiz questions. (He’s written thousands of them, you know.)

Now read on…

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SH: What’s the secret to writing a good quiz question?

MG: Quiz questions are a test of your instant recall, but good ones tickle something Pavlovian as well, I reckon. They have to be one of three things: challenging, interesting, or heart-warming. Challenging ones give you a sense of achievement on figuring them out, interesting ones make you have that “wow” moment where you feel like you’ve learned something, and heart-warming ones are the ones that tug at nostalgia, the ones that make you think of something that makes you smile or laugh, or take you back to childhood.

There’s a fourth kind, which I think is fun in small doses: the troll question. The ones that make people question everything before hearing the answer then comment “I nearly threw my phone at a wall.” My favourite one of these that I’ve ever written was “In which country is Fiji Water *actually* produced?”

It’s Fiji. Where else could it have been?

SH: Argh! Are there any topics or subject areas that you return to often, when you’re writing questions?

MG: Like my dad I’m a huge lover of music, and extremely unlike my dad, I love all things pop music. Every era, every style from bubblegum to new wave. My dad’s a bit of a punk, anti-establishment etc. Some of my earliest memories are listening to the Kraftwerk album ‘Radio-Activity’. I love that album now, but my teenage rebellion was a Lady Gaga phase. Pop music is also a quick shortcut to heart-warming when question writing – every couple has their song, everyone has their comfort playlist. When I want to be really self-indulgent, I’ll write one about Eurovision or AFL. I didn’t do much AFL on TikTok (on account of the global audience) but it would occasionally find its way in there.

SH: What’s an example of a question you’ve written that you’re really proud of?

MG: One of the joys of writing for TikTok was being able to write questions about media/culture that simply doesn’t get on TV. Questions about up-to-the-minute music, memes, Internet creators. I think people who are more used to legacy media look down on Internet culture, but below a certain age, it’s the mainstream. A really cool side to bringing a legacy format to the internet was seeing TikTok, especially younger users, feel as though their favourite online media was just as worthy of a trivia question as Madonna or Emmanuel Macron. I’ve been in network TV quiz writing sessions where someone like Sabrina Carpenter was deemed too difficult for a show. To the TikTok crowd, that’s medium difficulty, at worst! And sometimes, if I asked about a fellow creator, their fans would tag them and say “Hey! You’ve made it!” These people would sometimes have millions upon millions of followers or views, but being a quiz question somehow gave them more legitimacy. That’s the power of quiz.

SH: Are there any specific rules that you follow when you’re writing quiz questions?

MG: Never make someone feel stupid. Quizzing is a test of recall, not intelligence. It’s a pet peeve of mine when people say that they’re not very smart because they’re not good at trivia when of course, that’s not true – good quizzers have a well-stocked filing cabinet, not a tidy office. So, a question should always have some sort of hook for someone to guess the answer – at worst a player should feel like they’re learning, not being punished for a lack of it.

SH: Have you ever written any questions that turned out to be controversial?

MG: A tricky aspect of TikTok was writing questions for a global audience. The US/UK/Aussie divide was particularly tricky at times – asking a question about “which girl’s name is also a standard traffic light colour” didn’t play well in the US, for instance. And pop culture isn’t universal. Another complicating factor was the “well I’ve always known it as…” people. A lot of people would ask if I got the questions from a website or something. No! I write and research them myself! And that isn’t necessarily well-understood. I asked “Which snack food is known in US slang as a goober?” and a lot of Americans came into my comments saying “Well I’ve never heard it that way.” Respectfully your opinion doesn’t matter Amanda, I checked it in dictionaries!!
… you might have poked a nerve, Stephen.

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Whoops – sorry about that, Miles. Okay, then maybe we should just take a break, have a little bit of a breather, and reconvene here next Tuesday afternoon. Sound good? Good, great, let’s just do that. Okay, I’ll see you then, then. Bye!