Every team answers the same question at once. Everyone who gets it right climbs a rung. First to the summit wins.
In Google Sheets use File, then Share, then Publish to the web, and choose CSV.
You can also add ?game=ADDRESS to this page's own address to bookmark a set.
Copy your rows out of Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers. Click the first cell below and press Ctrl+V, or Cmd+V on a Mac. A header row is detected and skipped automatically.
| Question? | Answer? | Image URL? | Topic? | Hazard? |
|---|
On a hazard round a wrong answer drops a team back one rung. Base camps stop the slide: once a team
reaches rung 3, 6, or 9 they can never fall below it. You can also mark specific questions as
hazards with a hazard column in your file.
One file holds everything on this screen: your questions, every team name and colour, the climb length, base camps, hazard frequency, the timer, and the sound settings. Build it at home, bring the one file in, and there is nothing to set up again.
Any AI tool can write these for you. Three steps.
You are writing a question set for a classroom "summit climb" review game.
Every team answers the same question at the same time on whiteboards. Each team
that gets it right climbs one rung. First to the summit wins.
OUTPUT
Give me exactly one CSV code block and nothing else. No commentary above or
below it. The first line must be this header, unchanged:
question,answer,image,topic,hazard
COLUMNS
question What students see. May be blank only if there is an image.
answer What the host reveals when boards go up. Short enough to read from
across a classroom.
image A web address of a picture, or blank. Usually blank.
topic Optional short label shown above the question. Blank is fine.
hazard Put yes to make it a hazard round, where a wrong answer costs a rung.
Leave blank for a normal round. Mark about one in five, and pick the
ones where a careless slip is the likely error rather than the ones
that are simply hardest.
HOW MANY
One question per round. A ten rung climb runs 12 to 18 rounds, so 20 questions
covers a class period. Ask me the climb length if I have not said.
CSV RULES THAT MATTER
Wrap any field containing a comma in double quotes.
Write a double quote inside a quoted field as two double quotes.
Do not add extra columns or reorder them.
MATH
Math is rendered by KaTeX. Write LaTeX between dollar signs, with SINGLE
backslashes. CSV needs no escaping of backslashes.
Inline: Simplify: $8 + 3 \times 4$ answer: $20$
Centered: Add: $$\frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{4}$$ answer: $$\frac{7}{12}$$
Use $$ for anything with a fraction, a radical, or a tall expression.
Wrap bare numbers in dollar signs too, so digits render consistently.
Escape a literal dollar sign as \$ and a percent sign as \%, for example
$\$42$ and $35\%$.
Stick to \frac \times \div \le \ge \ne \pm \pi \approx \sqrt{} \text{} and
superscripts and subscripts. No align environments, no \newcommand.
WRITING GOOD QUESTIONS
Every team works every question, so they must be solvable on a whiteboard in
under a minute. Nothing that needs a page of work.
Start easier and build. The teams that fall behind early stop trying, so keep
the first few rounds within reach of everyone.
Every question must have exactly one defensible answer, because the host is
marking four whiteboards at once in front of the class.
The subject does not have to be math.
EXAMPLE OF THE EXPECTED SHAPE
question,answer,image,topic,hazard
Simplify: $8 + 3 \times 4$,$20$,,Order of operations,
Add: $$\frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{4}$$,$$\frac{7}{12}$$,,Fractions,
"A $\$60$ jacket is marked down $30\%$, find the sale price.",$\$42$,,Percent,yes
What is the capital of Australia?,Canberra,,Trivia,
Wait for my next message before writing anything.
Check what comes back before class. The builder tab here shows a live preview of each question.
| The idea | Every team answers the same question at the same time, so one question serves the whole room. You need one question per round, not one per team. |
| How many | A ten rung climb usually takes 12 to 18 rounds. Twenty questions covers a class period comfortably. If the pool runs out it reshuffles. |
| CSV columns | question, answer, image, topic, hazard. Only question and answer are required. |
| Hazard column | Put yes to force a question to be a hazard round, where a wrong answer costs a rung. Leave it blank and the game picks hazards at random using the setting in Setup. |
$ ... $ | Inline math. Simplify $3 + 4 \times 5$ |
$$ ... $$ | Math on its own centered line, good for fractions and long expressions. |
\frac{3}{4} | Fractions. Also \times \div \le \ge \ne \pi \sqrt{} and x^2. |
| Backslashes | Strict JSON needs every backslash doubled. Leave the box in the Paste text tab checked and you can type them singly. |
| Reuse | A question file written for the other games works here without changes. |
| A round | Press Next question. The question goes up with a timer. Everyone works it on a whiteboard. |
| Boards up | Press Boards up to reveal the answer. Team cards appear along the bottom. |
| Marking | Tap every team that got it right so their card turns green. Leave the rest alone. Then press Climb. |
| Shortcut | Everyone got it marks all teams at once, which is common on easy rounds. |
| Hazard rounds | A red bar warns you. On those rounds a team that misses drops back one rung instead of just staying put. |
| Base camps | Rungs 3, 6, and 9 are base camps. Once a team reaches one they can never fall below it, so a bad streak cannot wipe out a whole climb. |
| Winning | First team to the summit. If two arrive on the same round they share it. |
| Space | Boards up, then Climb on the second press |
| 1 to 4 | Toggle whether that team got it right |
| A | Everyone got it |
| T | Start or stop the timer, which also starts and stops the music |
| M | Start or stop the music by hand |
| F | Full screen on or off |
| Esc | Skip the question without anyone moving |
| Fix a position | Alt-click a team's track to nudge them down a rung, shift-click to nudge them up. |