Activities Around the World: American Mensa’s CultureQuest
For the past several decades, American Mensa has been hosting CultureQuest.
CultureQuest might be considered a trivia game or competition, but its intent has always been to promote and test cultural literacy. Facing questions that range from film to politics, from literature to geography, from music to history and further afield, Mensan teams of up to five members gather in their neighborhoods on a single day across the U.S. and Canada and, for 90 minutes, compete for cash prizes and cultural literacy bragging rights. Evolving from a simple trivia competition in 1990 between one region’s Local Groups, CQ is now truly the quest for cash prizes and bragging rights. With a rich history of volunteerism, it promotes and tests cultural literacy – with a side order of fun!
CultureQuest takes place virtually. The morning of the quiz, Team Captains are emailed a link and an additional PDF copy of the quiz for reference. The PDF containing the quiz questions is not opened until the contest start time. Start times will be staggered across time zones, so all teams take the test simultaneously.
Each team has up to five primary players and up to two alternates. They have 90 minutes to complete the quiz. No reference materials or search engines of any sort may be used or consulted during the quiz. All maps, charts, calculators, measuring devices, and other reference materials must be removed from the test site.
Teams may choose whether to gather in-person or virtually to complete the quiz, based on their own comfort level. If a team prefers to meet virtually, they may complete the exam using the online meeting platform of their choice.
CultureQuest: The Next Generation is the Youth Division. All persons playing on a Next Generation team must have been born on or after May 1, 2005. Only the Youth Division team captain must be a current Mensan; other team members don’t have to be Mensa members.
The entry fee of $50 per U.S. team and $55 (U.S.) per Canadian team is payable at the time of registration. Most of the registration money is used to provide cash prizes, awarded to the 20 teams with the highest scores.
CultureQuest XXXIV will take place April 30.