Rowena Stewart

Hello, and welcome to the first HTWGS.com post for 2025.

And I have a treat for you today – it’s a guest post from first-time contributor, Rowena Stewart!

“Who is Rowena Stewart?”, I pretend to hear you ask. Well… Rowena is an avid quiz show watcher who grew up on a diet of classroom posters, newspaper puzzles and reading the origin story of Vegemite on the jar’s label. Much later in life, she discovered the widespread community of others with a similar thirst for knowledge and she’s now doing her bit to raise awareness of – and invite others into – the wondrous world of quizzing. 

I’m grateful to Rowena for reaching out to me, and for wanting to spread the word about the many quizzing opportunities out there for you, dear HowToWinGameShows.com visitor.

And now… Take it away, Rowena!

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Have you ever watched a quiz show and thought “Who could possibly know the answer to that?”

I’ve often asked that myself, and the answer is an ever-growing community of very welcoming, supportive, and knowledgeable people I’ve gotten to know over the past few years. 

We’re a group of curious people called competitive or league quizzers and we love learning interesting facts, and trivia. But we don’t just stop at getting the immediate answer to questions. We go down rabbit holes and click all the Wikipedia links, branching out from points of interest to create a dense canopy to the forest of knowledge. Then we pay a modest fee to be tested on our recall, purely for pleasure with no lure of a monetary reward.

One such testing method you might have heard about is the World Quizzing Championships (WQC), held annually on the first Saturday of June. This is sometimes considered “The Olympics of Quizzing” as it’s a worldwide event with all continents (bar Antarctica) represented. Many are deterred by its difficulty, but it’s not often we mere mortals get to measure ourselves against the giants of the quiz world. Being an international quiz, there can be no bias towards one part of the world. So when it comes to movies, you might get a question about an American blockbuster alongside questions on Bollywood, Egyptian Cinema and Best Foreign Language Film Directors. The quiz itself is so challenging the top score is around 70%. Yet, in 2024 almost 2000 individuals took part. 

Despite its prominence, the WQC isn’t necessarily the best place for a newcomer to begin. 

That’s why Quizzing Australia launched the Australian Quiz Championships (AQC) in February of 2024 as an offering that’s more accessible to an Australian audience without compromising on difficulty. Its format is inspired by the World Quizzing Championships but with an innovative approach to topic distribution, giving specialists more to play for.

The questions aren’t the short-form ‘know-it-or-don’t’ type you’d get at pub trivia. They’re more like what you’d hear on Mastermind or Hard Quiz, but printed on a piece of paper beside a box for you to write your answer. Each question will usually include multiple pieces of information to help you reach the answer. For example, rather than “For two points, name the horse and jockey who won the Melbourne Cup in 2015″, the question may be phrased as follows: “In 2015, Michelle Payne became the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup. What alliterative name did her horse have? It’s no Model of a Modern Major General, but it is named after a City in Cornwall.”*

With enough exposure and practice, these hints become less puzzling and more of a confirmation you’ve got the correct answer, like cryptic crossword clues.  

These kinds of hints and keywords also get used in game shows and it’s how players like Australian Chasers Issa Schultz, Brydon Coverdale, David Poltorak and Mara Lejins can answer correctly after having heard only half the question. For example, if you hear the word “arachnid”, 99% of the time the answer is going to be “a spider” (and maybe only 1%, “a scorpion”). 

So if you’re serious about winning on a game show, why not come and prepare in a low-pressure environment and train that recall muscle? Then, when you get to the TV studio with butterflies in your stomach, those keywords will be like Pavlov ringing a bell for his dogs.

While the AQC occurs once per year,  Quizzing Australia also runs a number of other events throughout the year:

• Squizzed / Hot 100 – these are written quizzes of 100 questions each, completed individually. These are arranged at physical venues monthly in most capital cities. Check Facebook for details.

• Quiz Nations – online format played in teams with an individual answer component and a team answer component. It’s just like your weekly community sport competitions… but instead of tossing or kicking a ball around, you’re verbally answering quiz questions!

• National Quiz Day – This is a full-day annual event where the national pairs and teams championships are contested, interspersed with novelty subject quizzes. Location will vary by year – check Quizzing Australia’s events page for updates.

• State championships – written pen-and-paper quizzes with an individual round and pairs / teams round. ACT, QLD, VIC are in March. NSW, SA and WA are in November. 

And if you want something a bit more casual that can be done in your own time, here’s a selection of some other resources available:

• Learned League – This is an invite-only competition run through a website. Past questions for each season are publicly available here. It was mentioned in Brydon “The Shark” Coverdale’s Quizmasters (which you have a copy of, right?) Good. Now open it up to Chapter 9 ‘Trivial Pursuits’ for an excellent summary on gameplay. 

• Jeopardy! questions archive Just the questions – no ads or chitchat.

• Wikiquiz.org – question sets submitted by people from all over the world.

• Thrice by Geeks Who Drink – https://thrice.geekswhodrink.com/.

• The Weekly Fifty – Weekly Quiz.

• Newspaper quizzes – hardquiz, stuff.co.nz.

• Brisquiz – Friday Quick Quizzes

• IQ trivia – Interesting Question of the day

• The Antipodean Quizzers Discord community for general chatter and connecting with like-minded people. 

I hope to see you at one of these events sometime soon! And for readers outside of Australia, check out your local quiz leagues for any events they may be running in your area. Questions sets for the Australian Quiz Championships will be made available after the event. Sets from other Quizzing Australia events can be found on their website here. For any enquiries, the best way to contact them is via emailing info@quizzingaustralia.org. 

* For those playing along at home, the answer is ‘Prince of Penzance’.

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Once again, I’d like to thank Rowena so much for this week’s post, and to remind you that if YOU’d like to do what Rowena’s done, and contribute a guest post for HowToWinGameShows.com, just email me at Stephen@HowToWinGameShows.com, and let’s start a discussion! My (virtual) door is always open.

Until next time, take care!

Stephen