Quizterix Card Games
If you want a hands-on introduction on how to play, please watch our How to Play video.
Quizterix Card Games give you a good introduction to simple Memory Tricks. With 52 events and their dates and the answers to more than 200 relevant questions you will get an outstanding overview of a topic. You also become a much better memorizer - which is a very useful skill. Your memory is great. When you use it to its strengths and, with a little bit of training, you can memorize 3 times more and 3 times faster. And you don’t even have to work hard. All it takes is a relaxing evening playing a fun game with family and friends.
Our first Quizterix game “The Cold War” is now available in our Shop. There are other event packs in the making. We are planning on launching “World History” and “US History” this year. We will add further GCSE-relevant topics such as “Early Elizabethan England” for those who use Quizterix as a powerful revision tool. But history is not the only topic we intend to cover. Stay tuned for further content on Science, Sports, Arts, and also Memorable City Breaks. Leave us a comment on what you would love to play next below!
We have started with The Cold War as a good starter pack. All the events are in the 20th century which makes date memorization easier. Many of the events are still within the lifetime of many of us, which results in great cross-generation gameplay! And then it covers a topic that is taught in schools in many countries, which makes the game a fantastic revision tool (literally!)
Quizterix can be used as a highly efficient and fast revision tool and is suitable to be used in school settings. If you are a teacher, please check Quizterix Classroom for more details.
Adaptable Rules
The standard Quizterix ruleset consists of players taking turns memorizing and recalling events, their dates, and factual knowledge associated with the events. It works best for players who already have some general knowledge about the events in place. The game can be adapted to allow novices and beginners to start out building their cognitive schemas
Novices
This ruleset is for anyone who is starting out with no prior knowledge about the events. It focuses on just building your first memory pegs. General knowledge questions and answers are left out. The timeline is shorter and new events are only added when existing ones are resolved to allow focus on building new knowledge.
With less cognitive load, the ruleset also works well for those who are new to the major system and memorisation techniques in general so that they can focus on building and practicing skills.
Beginners
If you already have some prior knowledge or you have built your first memory pegs with Quizterix, the beginner’s rule set may be just right for you.
We have included the pub-quiz style questions so that you can broaden, deepen and strengthen your cognitive schemas with additional detail.
We have also made your initial timeline a bit longer to add more pace, but we still recommend only to add new events to your timeline only once you flipped event cards. This should result in gameplay that is slow enough to facilitate memorisation but also challenging enough for the game to be fun to play.
Intermediate and Advanced
The standard rule set was designed for players who have some understanding of the historic events. If you have learned about the topic in school or you are otherwise aware, choose the standard rule set.
if your knowledge is a bit fuzzy and shaky in some of the details. Rebuilding existing knowledge is a lot faster than starting from scratch. Having a timeline of 4 and seeding in new events fast makes the game more challenging and competitive.
How Quizterix Works
There are things people have a good memory for and there are other things where we struggle. Historic dates and facts are not easy to memorize for anyone. We are much better with funny images and stories.
This is why competitive memory champions do not cram in numbers directly. They wrap facts that are really hard to remember in things that are much easier to memorize. Numbers turn into words that stand in for the numbers. 65 turns into Jiving Lions. Karate Zebra is a 70. There is a standard to do this translation, which is called the Major System.
If you stick to it, you can share them with others - as we do in Quizterix. If you get some experience with these techniques, you will be able to make much better use of your memory. Did you know that the world record for memorizing random events and their dates stands at 241 in only 5 minutes?
Memory champions use highly efficient memorization tricks. They also train hard. We use a simple system to give you a good introduction to mnemonics that work well and may get you started with even better methods!
The anchor point of our system is an often absurd or funny image. The human mind can process an image in 13 milliseconds, much faster than text. It is also a great way to use the Von Restorff effect (silly things are a lot easier to remember) to our advantage. The description of the little scene is in fact an encoding for the event and its date. Here we have a Cocky Neanderthal Waterskiing. The game teaches and practices the Major System that simply turns numbers into letters. There is a card in the game so that beginners can look up the Major System whenever they need it. C is a 7, N is a 2. Cocky Neanderthal is a 72. Waterskiing creates a memory hook for Watergate. With a bit of training, our stone age friend and his shades pop into our minds when we think about Watergate.
Bringing it all together
Here is an example from Quizterix gameplay: The 1956 Suez Crisis. Our mnemonic scene is “Leeches Sheltering in Sewers”. L is a 5, Sh is a 6. Sewers and Suez are homophones. This gives you the core information about the event and its date. We have a short description of the event on the reverse side and a number of questions about the event on a separate question-and-answer card.
Quizterix is about producing memory pegs to hang further knowledge onto. It gives you a start on a Bartlett Schema when the event is new to you. It extends the schema when your knowledge is sketchy. If you already know the event to this level of detail, it brings your schema to the forefront of your mind. The quick revision strengthens the schema in your memory.
Quizterix does not teach history or the topic beyond that point. It does not replace teachers or a good book. But with a couple of rounds of Quizterix under your belt, a lesson is not clouded by a lack of basic knowledge. And you will have a headstart when you read about the topic in a book.
Approaching knowledge with existing schemas makes it much easier to attach new knowledge. With lessons or simply with some further reading, related schemas quickly form larger networks. Now you can make comprehensive arguments about wider historic questions. And while you do so, you can throw in your factual knowledge without effort.
Get in touch
Please share your Quizterix experiences with us. Also, let us know about a topic we should release and when you want to be notified when new packs come out.
