How Well Do You Know Me? Running a Couples Quiz Right

A “How well do you know me?” couples quiz works best when you treat it as a guessing game with a story attached, not a test your partner can fail. One of you asks, the other predicts the answer, and the fun lives in the wrong guesses. Get the setup right and it is one of the cheapest, easiest date nights there is. Get it wrong and somebody sulks over a question about their favourite cereal.

What is a “how well do you know me” couples quiz?

A “how well do you know me” couples quiz is a round of questions where one partner answers about themselves in secret and the other tries to guess what they said. Points go to correct guesses. That is the whole format.

It is older than most of us. The Newlywed Game, a Chuck Barris production hosted by Bob Eubanks, premiered on ABC on July 11, 1966, and built an entire TV show on wives predicting their husbands’ answers and then swapping roles. The couples on that show were married less than two years, which is part of why the misses were so funny.

Why does knowing the small stuff matter?

Knowing the small stuff matters because, in relationship researcher John Gottman’s framework, it is the ground floor of a solid relationship. Gottman calls that knowledge a “love map”: the part of your mind that stores your partner’s worries, favourite things, history and hopes, and it needs updating as they change.

Building love maps is the first principle in his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, and the first level of what The Gottman Institute calls the Sound Relationship House.

So a quiz is not trivia for its own sake. It is a quick check on how current your map is. And the honest truth? Most maps are out of date. You know their favourite food from 2019. You might not know what is stressing them out this month.

How do you run a couples quiz so it stays fun?

You run a couples quiz well by setting three rules before the first question: answers are written down, wrong guesses get explained, and nobody keeps a grudge score. Those three rules turn a test into a game, because the misses become stories instead of evidence. Here is the setup I would use.

1. Write answers first. The person being asked about writes their answer on paper or a phone note before the other guesses. No quietly changing it afterwards to match.
2. Take turns in rounds of five. Five questions about you, then five about your partner. It keeps anyone from sitting in the hot seat too long.
3. Ask “why?” after every miss. This is the good part. A wrong guess about their dream holiday is a ten-minute conversation waiting to happen.
4. Mix easy and hard. Start with things you should both nail, then move into questions that need real attention.
5. Put a small prize on it. Loser picks the next film, makes breakfast, or gives a back rub. Low stakes, real motivation.

A 20-question night in rounds of five runs like this:

Which questions should you ask, and at what level?

The best couples quiz questions move from facts to preferences to inner life, and the table below shows what each level tests and when to use it. Facts are easy to score. Inner-life questions are where you actually learn something.

Do not skip “When do I feel most appreciated by you?” just because it feels awkward. A 2012 paper by Gordon and colleagues in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology linked feeling appreciative of a partner, across 3 studies, to being more responsive to their needs, more committed and more likely to still be together over time. Knowing when your partner feels appreciated makes that appreciation a lot easier to show.

A few more to steal for each level:

• Facts: What city was I born in? What was my first job?
• Preferences: Beach or mountains? Which chore do I hate most?
• Current life: Who at work is annoying me right now? What am I looking forward to?
• Inner life: What is a fear I rarely mention? What would I do with a year off?

“Open-ended questions are questions that have a whole story as an answer.”

Julie Schwartz Gottman, co-founder of The Gottman Institute, speaking to KUOW in 2014

If you want more material for the deeper levels, our list of conversation starter questions for couples is sorted the same way, from light to deep.

What mistakes ruin a couples quiz?

The mistake that ruins a couples quiz most often is treating a wrong answer as proof that your partner does not care. It is not. Some facts just never came up, and people change their minds about things constantly. A miss is a gap in the map, nothing more, and filling it is the point.

Ben once swore my 2am diner order would be a cheeseburger. It is pancakes. It has always been pancakes, and the ten minutes we spent arguing about it got more laughs than every question he answered correctly.

That shared laugh is not a side effect. A 2015 study by Kurtz and Algoe in Personal Relationships coded video of 71 couples telling the story of how they met, and the share of the conversation partners spent laughing together was linked to higher relationship quality, closeness and social support.

A quiz like this also needs some shared history to work. If you have only been on a couple of dates, icebreaker games made for early dates are a better fit for now.

Other ways it goes sideways:

• Gotcha questions. “What did I wear on our third date?” is a trap, not a question. Skip anything designed to catch someone out.
• Doing it in front of friends first. A quiz at a party can get competitive fast. Play it alone together before you take it public. When you do, our guide to double date party games shows how to run it couple against couple without it turning tense.
• Going deep too early. Opening with “what is my biggest regret?” on a tired weeknight lands badly. Earn the heavy questions.
• Keeping score across weeks. One night, one scoreboard. Then let it go.

Is a card game easier than writing your own quiz?

A card game is easier than writing your own quiz because someone else has already done the question-writing and the pacing for you. Writing thirty good questions takes longer than you would think, and most people run dry after ten. When Ben and I tried it, we stalled at question eleven.

That is the idea behind the LOOPY game for couples: separate decks that go from talk and fun up to more personal territory, so you can pick the level for the night instead of improvising. If you are weighing it against other decks, our couples card games guide compares the styles, and the question games for couples page has more formats built around asking and answering.

Want a full evening? Open with a quiz, then roll into one of the date night games at home. It also makes a sweet round at an anniversary game night, where “what do you remember about the day we met?” hits different. Apart right now? The quiz works fine over video, and our games for long-distance couples guide shows how to set it up.

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