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Words: Byrdon CoverdaleProducer: Louise Starkey
Australia's top quiz champions reveal what it takes to know it all
You might dominate Trivial Pursuit evenings, or have won big on a TV quiz show. But that's nothing compared to the World Quizzing Championships.
Australia's top quiz champions — the Usain Bolts of general knowledge — reveal what it takes to know it all.
The WQC, annually run by the International Quizzing Association, is like a school exam on steroids. It is held simultaneously in 45 countries, in 15 languages, with up to 3000 competitors. Australia is a minor player, with usually just a few dozen participants.
Picture: Twitter | Megan Barnes
The event consists of 240 questions divided into eight categories: culture, entertainment, history, lifestyle, media, sciences, sport and games, and world. The winning score tends to be in the range of 160-170.
Picture: YouTube | Hrvatski Kviz Savez
The Chase Australia's The Supernerd, Issa Schultz, has won eight Australian championships in the 11 years from 2011 to 2021. The 38-year-old has been a quiz obsessive since his teenage years.
Issa Schultz
Picture: YouTube | This Morning
He was an almost nightly caller to Tony Delroy's after-midnight quiz on ABC radio and appeared on The Rich List, The Einstein Factor, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? and Millionaire Hot Seat.
Taking notes helps Issa's recall. He can visually recall the placement of information on a page, helping him pinpoint answers. He studies every day, either facts that might come up on the show or else building his arsenal of arcane knowledge for the WQC.
Ross Evans, 68, has gone up against Issa and won three titles at the Australian leg of the World Quizzing Championships between 2011 and 2021. He values his privacy greatly and has had no interest in appearing on a TV show.
Ross Evans
Ross stumbled into high-level quizzing through the happy accident of his regular pub trivia venue, hosting the Australian leg of the WQC in 2008. He now spends up to four hours a day studying, taking notes, filling folders of information that might come up.
I think anyone who does quizzing has an inquiring mind. And if you’ve got an inquiring mind, you want to know stuff, you want to understand stuff. You want to know why this happened, or why someone did something, or how this works.
Ross Evans
Quiz Master
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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/web-stories/free/the-australian/australias-top-quiz-champions-reveal-what-it-takes-to-know-it-all