‘I’ve by no means pushed a automobile. I can’t cook dinner. I’m a misplaced trigger’: meet Australia’s high quizzers | Quiz and trivia video games

[ad_1] Issa Schultz has a day by day schedule that not many might compete with.

“I rise up, I make a espresso, I am going on the pc and I do quizzes. I take a break for lunch after which get again on the pc for extra quizzes,” he says. “It seems like an sickness, and others could diagnose it as that, however I'm that obsessed. It’s not an exaggeration to say I deal with it as an eight-hour job – a full-time day.”

Schultz is Australia’s #1 ranked quizzer, the identify for the individuals who take trivia very significantly. It’s a pastime he’s structured his whole life round. For about six weeks a 12 months, Schultz movies the Channel 7 present The Chase Australia, the place he serves as one of many quizshow’s “chasers” – the consultants whom contestants should topple in the event that they need to take residence the prize cash (his nickname on the present, fittingly, is The Supernerd). The remainder of the time, he’s simply brushing up on his African capitals, AFL drafts or Academy Award winners.

“What I needs to be doing goes out and doing different work, like a traditional human being,” he laughs. “However hey, I’m a single man. I don’t have a household. I've no tasks … I’m on this distinctive state of affairs the place I've the time.”

Schultz because the Supernerd on the Channel 7 present The Chase Australia. {Photograph}: The Chase And it may very well be worse: “There are individuals, particularly within the UK and USA, who're devoting much more hours to this than I'm.”

Quizzing is a distinct segment however international pursuit, undertaken in every single place from North America to Europe and India, the place it’s notably well-liked. You may consider it as a step above pub trivia, notably when it comes to issue: Schultz used to play in pub groups seven days per week earlier than levelling up. “Once you get to worldwide quizzing, pub trivia simply isn’t obscure sufficient,” he says.

In quizzing, typical questions may span the comparatively easy (“Who was the navy dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990?”) via to extra cryptic duties, like naming the phrase that hyperlinks a sequence of seemingly disparate pictures.

And as an alternative of happening inside a rowdy watering gap, more often than not quizzing is undertaken in silence or solitude. The largest occasion on the annual quizzing calendar is the World Quizzing Championships, held every June, the place quizzers have two hours to write down out their solutions to questions learn by a proctor in an exam-style in-person setting; as of 2024, Australia additionally has its personal nationwide championship, which was most not too long ago held in February with venues in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. These competitions – which include zero prize cash – decide the nationwide and international quizzer rankings, however devotees may even discover different smaller competitions and Zoom leagues to maintain busy with – and, as Schultz so diligently does, dedicate spare time to brushing up on their normal data.

‘Once you get to worldwide quizzing, pub trivia simply isn’t obscure sufficient’: Issa Schultz. {Photograph}: The Guardian “Largely once I clarify to individuals what I’m doing on the weekend, I say, ‘I’m going to a library to only sit in silence for an hour with a gaggle of different nerds’,” says Sally Gridley, one other of Australia’s enthusiastic quizzers. “We do an examination for enjoyable. They’re like, are there prizes? I say, no, it’s simply in regards to the glory, and also you pay to do it.”

Gridley has been quizzing significantly for the final 11 years and even as soon as received The Chase, together with her group taking residence $102,000 in prize cash for his or her efforts. Quiz TV exhibits like The Chase and Mastermind are well-liked, each for the joys and the truth that they’re the one actual method to monetise their pastime. Gridley estimates Australia’s quizzing neighborhood to be made up of round solely 30 to 35 common quizzers; worldwide, the worldwide leaderboard reveals an unofficial membership of slightly below 2,000. It's a small however devoted scene, contributors say – however one that's pleasant, supportive and all the time welcoming to newcomers.

It's, nevertheless, dominated by a specific demographic: males. Gridley estimates she’s one in every of about eight common feminine quizzers in Australia, placing the native scene at about 90% male – one thing she will be able to greatest attribute to the social stigma of it being a “nerdy” pursuit that girls maybe don’t see themselves becoming into. And there’s overlap in different communities, too.

“It takes one to know one, however quizzing is pretty [popular] in neurodivergent demographics as nicely – plenty of quizzers have circumstances like autism or ADHD,” Gridley says. “And there’s numerous introverts. Like, I’m in all probability essentially the most gregarious individual within the room at any quiz perform.”

Or as Schultz places it: “There’s plenty of eccentrics – and we love our eccentrics!”

To make it up the leaderboard as a quizzer, one actually will need to have the capability for a sure sort of obsession.

‘It’s simply in regards to the glory’: quizzer Sally Gridley together with her prize from ABC’s Exhausting Quiz. {Photograph}: Ellen Smith/The Guardian Thirty-five-year-old finance employee Aaran Mohann, ranked third in Australia, considers himself much less diligent with research than many others – devoting solely round six hours per week to it. His main tactic is to do as many on-line quizzes as doable, within the hope the solutions burrow into his mind. Quizzes, he says, are likely to tread related floor – proper now, as an example, many are overlaying popular culture phenomena just like the Coldplay live performance affair or Dubai chocolate.

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Flashcarding as a memorisation approach is the brand new massive factor within the quizzing neighborhood, Mohann says. “And plenty of quizzers will let you know they do Wikipedia trawls – you begin with one article, click on on one other, and also you’re nonetheless there a few hours later.”

Schultz watches plenty of motion pictures within the hope a plot level may come up in a quiz, and he additionally buys Dorling Kindersley reference books on all the things from drugs to fishing, then copies out information he finds attention-grabbing into his personal notebooks by hand. It’s a system that “is not sensible to anybody however myself”.

He does draw a line, although: “Pat Gibson is among the best British quizzers of all time and he reads one thing like 5 newspapers a day. I simply can’t carry myself to try this – there’s an excessive amount of dangerous information.”

Australia's representatives on the 2024 Quizzing Olympiad in Spain (Aaran Mohann is way proper), with Jane Allen of the Worldwide Quizzing Affiliation. {Photograph}: Provided Even exterior the joys of competitors and TV turns, there’s lots to like about being a devoted quizzer. Gridley enjoys the sense of accomplishment that comes with getting a solution proper, and the information she’s gained alongside the way in which have confirmed useful in her job as a trainer. Mohann says the pastime rewards his pure curiosity in regards to the world. Quizzing, which calls for an in depth studying of the questions lest you disastrously identify a metropolis when the check paper really requested for a rustic, has additionally sharpened his consideration to element.

And for Schultz, there’s a chilled consistency to the pursuit.

“I like that it’s all about information and truths, particularly at the present time when there’s AI and [fake news],” he says. “We will ignore all that and are available again to, which King of England was beheaded in 1649? It was Charles I then, it will likely be Charles I tomorrow, it can nonetheless be Charles I in 100 years’ time.”

Schultz loves the life he’s constructed round quizzing – for higher or worse.

“I’ve by no means pushed a automobile. I can’t cook dinner. I’m the kind of one that will lose his home keys … I believe I’m a misplaced trigger exterior of quizzing. I’m doomed past evaluate.”

Schultz’s focus now's retaining his #1 rating in Australia – one thing he’s held yearly since 2011 – and ultimately climbing from a #15 world rating to say the #1 spot.

“Usain Bolt, who’s the world’s quickest man, he’s devoted his whole life to working. So I’m prepared to dedicate my whole life to quizzing,” he says. “I imply, why not?”