TCL-MUMPING -
It's interesting that you seem to regard the relationship between quiz setters and quiz entrants as "them and us". We regard quiz setting as a source of fun, interest and knowledge, and hope that the entrants see it like that too.
For the record, we get our original ideas for questions from books/ magazine articles/ out of our head, and then use the internet to check how easy the answer is to find, and then modify the clues accordingly.
I wasn't "mumping" (whatever that is!), I was merely pointing out the problems that quiz setters face, namely -
1. Questions too easy - everyone "wins".
2. Questions too difficult - no-one enters.
3. There is so much information on the web that there are usually errors/contradicting answers on different sites, which would cause controversy.
4. If the answer cannot be found anywhere on the internet we usually don't use the question because we know that most people don't use books.
Answer sharing on forums just adds another problem.
We regularly spend an hour on just one question getting it to just the right level of difficulty, and then someone gets the answer in a few minutes from a forum.
If the list of problems gets to the point where quiz setters give up, any would-be entrants would lose out also and that is the point I was trying to make.
Beverley Darnell