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Create Quiz Timer | Easy 4 Steps with AhaSlides | Best Update in 2023

Create Quiz Timer | Easy 4 Steps with AhaSlides | Best Update in 2023

Quizzes and Games

Anh Vu 30 May 2023 7 min read

Quizzes are full of suspense and excitement, and usually one specific part makes that happen… It’s the quiz timer!

Quiz timers enliven any quiz or test with the thrill of timed trivia. They also keep everyone at the same pace and level the playing field, making for an even and super fun quiz experience.

Here’s how to create a timed quiz for free!

Table of Contents

Overview

Who invented the first quiz?Richard Daly
How much time does it take for the quiz timer to respond?Immediately
Can I use quiz timer on Google Forms?Yes, but it’s hard to set up. Try AhaSlides instead!

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What is a Quiz Timer?

A quiz timer is simply a tool that helps you put a time limit on questions during a quiz. If you think of your favourite trivia gameshows, it’s likely that most of them feature some sort of quiz timer for questions.

Some quiz timers count down the entire time that the player has to answer, while others count down just the last 5 seconds before the ending buzzer goes off.

Likewise, some appear as enormous stopwatches on the centre of the stage (or screen if you’re doing a timed quiz online), while others are more subtle clocks just off to the side.

All quiz timers, however, fulfill the same roles…

  • To ensure that quizzes go along at a steady pace.
  • To gives players of different skill levels the same chance to answer the same question.
  • To enhance a quiz with drama and excitement.

Not all the quiz makers out there have a timer function for their quizzes, but the top quiz makers do! If you’re looking for one to help you make an online timed quiz, check out the quick step-by-step below!

Quiz Timer – 25 Questions

Playing a quiz timer can be awfully thrilling. The countdown adds extra excitement and difficulty, fostering participants to think quickly and make decisions under pressure. As the seconds tick away, the adrenaline builds, intensifying the experience and making it all the more engaging. Every second becomes precious, motivating players to focus and think critically to maximize their chances of success.

Cannot wait to play Quiz Timer? Let’s get started with 25 Questions to prove a Quiz Timer master. First, make sure you know the rule: We call it 5-second quizzes, which means you have only 5 seconds to finish each question, when time is up, you have to move to another one. 

Ready? Here we go!

Quiz Timer
Quiz Timer with AhaSlides – timed quiz maker

Q1. In what year did World War II end?

Q2. What is the chemical symbol for the element gold?

Q3. Which English rock band released the album “The Dark Side of the Moon”?

Q4. Which artist painted the Mona Lisa?

Q5. Which language has the more native speakers, Spanish or English?

Q6. In which sport would you use a shuttlecock?

Q7. Who is the lead vocalist of the band “Queen”?

Q8. The Parthenon Marbles are controversially located in what museum?

Q9. What is the largest planet in our solar system?

Q10. Who was the first President of the United States?

Q11. What are the five colours of the Olympic rings?

Q12. Who wrote the novel “Les Misérables“?

Q13. Who is the champion of FIFA 2022?

Q14. Which is the first product of the luxury brand LVHM?

Q15. What city is known as “The Eternal City”?

Q16. Who discovered that the earth revolves around the sun? 

Q17. What is the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world?

Q18. What is the capital city of Australia?

Q19. Which artist is known for painting the “Starry Night”?

Q20. Who is the Greek god of thunder?

Q21. What countries made up the original Axis powers in World War II?

Q22. Which animal can be seen on the Porsche logo?

Q23. Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (in 1903)?

Q24. Which country consumes the most chocolate per capita?

Q25. “Hendrick’s,” “Larios,” and “Seagram’s” are some of the best-selling brands of which spirit?

Congratulation if you finished all the questions, it is time to check how many correct answers you’ve got:

1- 1945

2- Au

3- Pink Floyd

4- Leonardo da Vinci

5- Spanish

6- Badminton

7- Freddie Mercury

8- The British Museum

9- Jupiter

10- George Washington

11- Blue, Yellow, Black, Green and Red

12 – Victor Hugo

13- Argentina

14- Wine

15- Rome

16- Nicolaus Copernicus

17- Mexico xity

18- Canberra

19- Vincent van Gogh

20- Zeus

21- Germany, Italy, and Japan

22- Horse

23- Marie Curie

24- Switzerland

25- Gin

Related:

How to Create Timed Quizzes Online

A free quiz timer can help you step up your timed trivia game. And you’re only 4 steps away!

Step 1: Sign up for AhaSlides

AhaSlides is a free quiz maker with timer options attached. You can create and host an interactive live quiz for free which people can play along with on their phones, kinda like this 👇

People playing AhaSlides quiz over Zoom
timed trivia quizzes

Step 2: Pick a Quiz (or Create your Own!)

Once you’ve signed up, you get full access to the template library. Here you’ll find a bunch of timed quizzes with time limits set by default, though you can change those timers if you want.

If you want to start your timed quiz from scratch then here’s how you can do that 👇

  1. Create a ‘new presentation’.
  2. Choose one of the 5 question types for your first question.
  3. Write out the question and answer options.
  4. Customise the text, background and colour of the slide that question shows on.
  5. Repeat this for every question in your quiz.

Step 3: Choose your Time Limit

On the quiz editor, you’ll see a ‘time limit’ box for each question.

For each new question you make, the time limit will be the same as the previous question. If you want to give your players less or more time on specific questions, you can alter the time limit manually.

In this box, you can enter a time limit for each question between 5 seconds and 1,200 seconds 👇

Step 4: Host your Quiz!

With all your questions done and your online timed quiz ready to go, it’s time to invite your players to join.

Press the ‘Present’ button and get your players to enter the join code from the top of the slide into their phones. Alternatively, you can click the top bar of the slide to show them a QR code that they can scan with their phone cameras.

Once they’re in, you can lead them through the quiz. At each question, they get the amount of time you specified on the timer to enter their answer and press the ‘submit’ button on their phones. If they don’t submit an answer before the timer runs out, they get 0 points.

At the end of the quiz, the winner will be announced on the final leaderboard in a shower of confetti!

Bonus Quiz Timer Features

What else can you do with AhaSlides’ quiz timer app? Quite a lot, actually. Here are a few more ways to customise your timer.

  • Add a countdown-to-question timer – You can add a separate countdown timer that gives everyone 5 seconds to read the question before they get the chance to put in their answers. This setting affects all questions in a real time quiz.
  • End the timer early – When everyone has answered the question, the timer will automatically stop and the answers will be revealed, but what if there’s one person who’s repeatedly failing to answer? Rather than sit their with your players in awkward silence, you can click the timer in the middle of the screen to end the question early.
  • Faster answers get more points – You can choose a setting to reward correct answers with more points if those answers were submitted quickly. The less the time has elapsed on the timer, the more points a correct answer will receive.

3 Tips for your Quiz Timer

#1 – Vary It

There’s bound to be different levels of difficulty in your quiz. If you think a round, or even a question, is more difficult than the rest, you can increase the time by 10 – 15 seconds to give your players more time to think.

This one also depends on the type of quiz you are doing. Simple true or false questions should have the shortest timer, along with open-ended questions, while sequence questions and match the pair questions should have longer timers as they require more work to complete.

#2 – If in Doubt, Go Bigger

If you’re a newbie quiz host, you may have no idea how long it takes for players to answer the questions you give them. If that’s the case, avoid going for timers of just 15 or 20 seconds – aim for 1 minute or more.

If your players end up answering way quicker than that – awesome! Most quiz timers will simply stop counting down when all of the answers are in, so no one ends up waiting around for the big answer reveal.

#3 – Use it as a Test

With a couple of quiz timer apps, including AhaSlides, you can send your quiz to a bunch of players for them to take at a time that suits them. This is perfect for teachers looking to make a timed test for their classes.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions


Got a question? We've got answers.

How to measure the time a person uses to complete a quiz. There is no better way than using a Quiz Timer. With Quiz Timer, you can set a limit on the time users have for each question, record the start and end times, and display the time taken for each question on the leaderboard. 
To create a timer for a quiz, you can use a timer funtion in quiz platform like AhaSlides, Kahoot, or Quizizz. Another way is using timer apps like Stopwatch, Online Timer with Alarm... 
In the classroom, quiz bees often have time limits ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes per question, depending on the questions' complexity and the participants' grade level. In a rapid-fire quiz bee, the questions are designed to be answered rapidly, with shorter time limits of 5 to 10 seconds per question. This format aims to test participants' quick thinking and reflexes.
Timers help maintain the pacing and flow of a game. They prevent players from lingering too long on a single task, ensuring progression and preventing gameplay from becoming stagnant or monotonous. Timer can also be the best tool to promote a healthy competitive environment where players strive to beat the clock or outperform others.
Unfortunately, Google Forms does not have a built-in feature to create a timed quiz. But you can use Add-on on the menu icon to set a a limited time on Google form. In the Add-on, choose and install formLimiter. Then, Click on the dropdown menu and choose date and time.
In Microsoft Forms, you can allocate a time limit for forms and tests. When a timer is set for a test or a form, the start page displays the total time allotted, answers will be automatically submitted after time-up, and you can not pause the timer in any case.