Trivia for everyone
Options on screen, everyone answers on their phone. The quicker you lock in a correct answer, the more it is worth.
Start here
One choice unlocks the rest of the show: who is playing against whom. Once that is settled, everything else can be arranged freely around it, and the rest of this document is a menu of things we can build inside whichever direction you choose.
A note on the word leaderboard: that is simply the ranking shown on the big screen. It is not on screen continuously — it comes up after each round, or every few questions, so it stays an event rather than wallpaper. Depending on the direction you pick there is either one leaderboard or two, and where there are two, the second can live on a side screen or be brought up on the main screen between rounds.
In all three directions the best individual table can be singled out and given its own prize. That option is always available and does not depend on the choice below.
How the room joins
The same in all three directions, and it takes about a minute.
1
Scan the QR code on the screen with your own phone.
2
Enter your table number and, if you like, a team name.
3
Enter the PIN shown on the screen so you join the right session.
4
Choose your group — audience, or one of the stage teams.
If somebody picks the wrong group, or joins the stage teams for fun, we move them across in the background. We know which four teams belong on stage, so nobody in the room notices anything. Delegates play on the phone already in their pocket: zero extra hardware for you to ship.
The three directions
Side by side first, then each one in full.
01
The Fifth Team
The room, as one team
4 stage teams
How the room scoresAll tables averaged into one score
LeaderboardsOne, with five names
Buzzer questionsRoom may buzz — open or earned
FinaleWager or stand-off
Table prizeYes
02
Two Games, One Show
Stage championship
Table championship
How the room scoresTables scored individually
LeaderboardsTwo — stage and tables
Buzzer questionsStage only; top tables send guests up
FinaleStand-off, best team vs best table
Table prizeYes
03
Four Fanclubs
How the room scoresGroup average feeds its stage team
LeaderboardsOne, with four teams
Buzzer questionsStage buzzes, the group reacts
FinaleWager or stand-off
Table prizeYes, on top of the team prize
All three work with the same equipment, the same room and the same question material. The difference is entirely in who is playing against whom.
01
The Fifth Team
The room plays the whole quiz as one extra team, alongside the four on stage.
Every table answers on its own phone, exactly like the teams on stage. For each question the scores of all tables are averaged into a single number, and that number is the room’s score. The leaderboard therefore shows five names: the four stage teams and the audience.
Tables are not playing against each other here. All eighty scores go into one average, so the room rises and falls together — a table that answers well pulls the audience total up, a table that guesses badly pulls it down. That is what makes it a genuine fifth competitor rather than a side activity.
Buzzer questions — two ways to run them
- Open. Every table may buzz in. One attempt per question, and everyone stays in the game for the whole round. Simple to explain, and it keeps all eighty tables involved.
- Earned. Only the highest-scoring tables may buzz. They get one attempt per question — the same as the teams on stage, so it is even — and a wrong answer puts that table out for the rest of the round. Fewer people pressing means fewer accidental presses and far less running about the hall.
The finale
- A wager, where all five teams stake part of their score on one final question — or a stand-off, where the best table comes forward and plays the leading stage team head to head. Both work here.
Worth knowing
The average of eighty tables moves in small steps, so the audience score is steady rather than dramatic. That reads as fair, but it means the excitement has to come from the questions and the buzzer moments rather than from a swinging scoreboard.
02
Two Games, One Show
Two separate competitions in the same room, joined together at three points.
The four stage teams have their own leaderboard and the tables have their own. Tables are scored individually, so each table is playing for itself and there is a table ranking from the first question onwards.
The tables play every round except the fastest-buzzer rounds. Those belong to the stage — which is what makes them work, because four people with buzzers is a spectacle and eighty tables with buzzers is chaos.
How the room gets onto the stage
- Before each fastest-buzzer round, the four highest-scoring tables from the previous round each send one person forward. Those four people form a fifth team and play the buzzer round on the stage.
- Across a six-round show that gives a natural rhythm: round 1 everyone plays, round 2 is a buzzer round with guests drawn from round 1, round 3 everyone plays, round 4 is a buzzer round with guests drawn from round 3, round 5 everyone plays, round 6 is the finale. Two moments where delegates are physically on the stage, both of them earned.
The finale
- A stand-off between the best stage team and the best table. Because the two competitions have been running side by side all hour, this is the moment they finally meet — which is exactly where you want the show to end.
Worth knowing
Two competitions means two leaderboards to show, and the second one needs somewhere to live: a side screen, or brought up on the main screen between rounds. There is still only one winner at the end — the stand-off decides it.
03
Four Fanclubs
The room is split into four groups, one behind each stage team.
There is no separate audience competition in this version. Every table is assigned to one of the four stage teams and belongs to that team for the rest of the show. The leaderboard still has four entries on it — but each entry is now a stage team plus its share of the room.
The effect in the hall is the thing worth having. The audience stops watching four experts and becomes four crowds watching their own. It also makes the room readable from the stage: the host can see where each team’s supporters are sitting and play to them.
Two ways to use the groups — and they combine
- Support only. When their team buzzes, the group shows what they think with colour cards, or simply by shouting and cheering. No points attached; it is pure atmosphere and it costs nothing to run.
- Scoring. The group plays along on the multiple-choice questions and their average is added to their stage team’s points. Now the cheering has money on it, and a strong crowd can carry a team that is having a difficult round.
Prizes
- One winning colour at the end. A best-table prize is possible on top of that, but only in the scoring version — if the groups are cheering rather than answering, there are no table scores to rank.
Dividing the room
- Decided in advance, not on the day. Each table is given a colour before anyone sits down, so delegates simply pick that colour in the app and we know the groups are even.
- Two ways to lay it out: four solid quarters of the room, which is easiest for the host to play to and looks striking from the stage — or colours spread table by table across the whole hall, so every part of the room is cheering for something.
Scoring, with example numbers
Points come from two things: whether the answer is correct, and how quickly it was given. The answer window counts down while a question is open, so an early correct answer is worth more than a late one, and a wrong answer scores nothing. Each table counts as one entry.
Worked example — one question, 10 points
Where the room is scored as one group — in The Fifth Team and in Four Fanclubs — the table scores are averaged. Three tables here to keep it readable; the arithmetic is identical with eighty, and scores are always whole numbers.
Table answers quickly, correct9
Table answers later, correct6
Table answers incorrectly0
Table doesn’t answer at all0 or ignored
The room’s score — the average5
Two levers we can set before the show
Both are decided once, up front, and then apply to the whole game.
1
How non-answering tables count.
A table that does not answer can either count as a zero in the room’s average, or be left out of it entirely. Counting them keeps the room honest about who is really playing; ignoring them is kinder to tables where people are still eating.
2
When a quiet table drops off.
If a table stops playing altogether it is removed from the average automatically after three to five unanswered questions, so tables that have gone back to their lunch do not sit in the standings or drag the field down. They rejoin the moment someone answers again.
Question & round types
The menu. All of it exists already and can be pointed at any subject you like, so the work sits in writing the questions rather than in building the machinery. Grouped by who is playing, because that is what decides where a round fits in the show.
Stage-led
The four teams on stage answer; the room watches and reacts. In two of these the room is still scoring while it watches.
Fastest buzzer
Short questions, first team to press gets to answer. The most watchable thing four people on a stage can do.
Steal and pass
The same mechanic, but a miss hands the question to the others. More tension per question, and the better choice for a headline round.
Whiteboards
All four teams write an answer and reveal at the same moment.
Right or wrong?
A stage team gives its answer, and then the room votes on whether it is correct. The room scores on judgement rather than recall, and it makes people watch the stage a great deal harder.
Jeopardy board
Categories and point values on a grid. The teams pick their own questions, which gives the stage some control and the host plenty to play with.
Family Feud
We poll the congress in advance, then the stage has to guess what everyone answered. Eight answers hidden on a board, revealed one at a time, with the most popular worth the most.
Guest seat
Delegates come up and play a round on the stage as a fifth team.
Everyone plays
Room and stage answer the same question at the same time, everyone on their own phone. Points come from being right and from being quick. This is the bulk of any show, and any of the answer types below can carry it.
Multiple choiceText answerFirst letterExact numberNumber within a marginClosest X winsCorrect orderImage selectionHotspotPairing
Extra crowd interaction options
No phones and no scoring needed. Quick to run, and usually the bits people talk about afterwards.
The room asks
A delegate puts a question to the stage. Fits naturally at the end of each round, so four or five times across the show. The stage answers on the buzzer or on the whiteboards.
Audience help line
A stage team that is stuck can call on the room. The hall votes, the result appears on screen, and the team then has to decide whether to trust it.
Stand up
Everyone stands. You sit down when you get one wrong. Last person standing wins, and it works as well with six hundred people as with sixty.
Colour cards
A, B, C or D held up in the air. The room turns into a bar chart the stage can read at a glance.
Best team name prize
Team names go up on screen, the host reads out the best of them and one wins something. Costs a minute and buys a lot of goodwill early on.
Camera on the leader
Between rounds, the room sees who is currently in front. Turns the standings into a moment rather than a slide.
Finale options
Two ways to end. Either one can be attached to any of the three directions.
Stand-off finale
The best table comes forward and plays the leading stage team head to head — the room’s champion against the experts, settled in front of everyone. It can be run without a wager so it comes down purely to the answers, and it is the natural way to close a show in which the room has been playing all hour.
Wager finale
Every team decides how much of its score to risk before the final question is revealed, so a team lying fourth can still win it. The question itself has to be genuinely difficult — if the room can guess it, the wager stops meaning anything.
Ways to answer
The building blocks underneath the rounds above. Any of them can be attached to any round, with or without media.
Answer types
Any of these can sit underneath any round.
Multiple choice
Two to six options, with one or more of them correct.
Text answer
An open box. Spelling slips are forgiven automatically, so nobody loses a point to a typo.
First letter
You type the whole name and only the first letter is scored.
Exact number
Right or wrong, no margin.
Number within a margin
Anything inside an accepted range counts, for example 80 to 90 per cent.
Closest X wins
The nearest few answers score. We set how many places pay out.
Correct order
Two to six items put in sequence, with partial credit.
Image selection
Up to six pictures, with one or more of them correct.
Hotspot
Tap the correct area on an image. New on the phone buzzer this year.
Pairing
Connect two lists by dragging. Also new this year.
Media
Any question can carry any of these.
Image
Shown whole, or uncovered gradually while the question runs.
Video
Played before the question, or running during it.
Audio
Played before the question, or running during it.
Answer media
An image or clip after the question to reveal the answer — the moment the host tells the story.
Example slides
A first look at what the room actually sees. These are working examples rather than finished artwork — some are in last year’s styling, and the Seoul show will follow the WCLC 2026 identity throughout. More are being designed now and will come with version two of this document.
Which image?
Up to six pictures and you pick the right one. Reads instantly across a large hall and needs no translation.
Myth or Landmark
A statement and two big buttons. The labels can be anything: myth or landmark, true or false, before or after 2010.
Put in order
Two to six items dragged into the right sequence on the phone. Partly right still earns something.
Closest X wins
A number question where nobody has to be exactly right. The nearest answers score, so a sensible guess still pays.
Name the figure
A portrait sharpens on screen while clues appear one by one. Answer at clue one for full points, or wait and settle for fewer.
Progressive reveal
The same trick with any image — a scan, a chart, a logo — uncovered piece by piece while the options sit alongside.
Unscramble
Letters shuffled on screen, one word to find. A pure change of pace, and it needs no artwork at all.
Family Feud
Eight answers from a poll of the congress, hidden on a board and revealed one at a time. The most popular answer is worth the most.
Match the pairs
Two columns to connect: names to discoveries, compounds to targets, cities to years.
Tap the spot
An image on screen and you tap the right place on your own phone. The most language-neutral question type we have.
Audio round
Sound instead of text: a piece of music, a recorded voice, a clip from an old congress.
Video round
A clip plays and pauses at a cue point; the room answers before it resumes.
Host-country round
A short, light round about Seoul and Korea. Five questions is plenty.
Fastest buzzer
Short questions, first team to press gets to answer.
Steal and pass
A miss hands the question to the other teams.
Jeopardy board
Categories and point values; the teams choose their own questions.
Fresh topics for a Jeopardy board
If the Jeopardy grid comes back, it wants new categories rather than last year’s. These are only examples to show the sort of thing that works — the content of the quiz is entirely IASLC’s call, and we are simply offering suggestions. Six categories here, five questions each, rising from 100 to 500.
Acronym Soup
What does it stand for?
TKI · SBRT · EBUS · NLST · NELSON
Named After
Who is it named after?
The stethoscope · the rays · the apical tumour with shoulder pain · the myasthenic syndrome in SCLC · the serpent on the IASLC staff
Seoul Searching
The host city, five for five.
The Korean alphabet · the river that splits the city · the largest of the five palaces · the year of the Olympics · the 2018 Winter host
First of Its Kind
The first time it ever happened.
First lobectomy · first CT scanner · first targeted agent approved · first WCLC · first screening trial to report
Around the World
Lung cancer beyond the clinic.
Incidence by region · national screening programmes · tobacco policy firsts · where the guidelines come from · who hosts next
This Congress
Written from the programme itself.
Most-used word in the abstracts · countries represented · sessions running at once · the opening speaker · how many are in the room right now