World Quizzing Championship

The World Quizzing Championship is an individual quiz contest organised by the International Quizzing Association (the umbrella organisation of various quizzing organisations from more than 25 countries around the world). The competition has been staged annually since 2003 (since 2004 in more than one country simultaneously) with an increasing number of contestants from an increasing number of nations. The reigning champion is Pat Gibson, an Irishman living in England, who defended his title.

Contents

List of WQC winners

Year Winner Runner Up Third Place
2011 Pat Gibson Kevin Ashman Tero Kalliolevo
2010 Pat Gibson Kevin Ashman Ronny Swiggers
2009 Kevin Ashman Ronny Swiggers Mark Bytheway
2008 Mark Bytheway Ronny Swiggers Tero Kalliolevo
2007 Pat Gibson Kevin Ashman Mark Bytheway
2006 Kevin Ashman Pat Gibson Nico Pattyn
2005 Kevin Ashman Pat Gibson Nico Pattyn
2004 Kevin Ashman Pat Gibson Ashish
2003 Olav Bjortomt Pat Gibson Alan Gibbs

Competition history

2003

A fledgling event was first staged by Quizzing.co.uk in 2003 at Villa Park football stadium, Birmingham, England. This saw 50 quizzers representing a handful of nations compete in a written test of quiz knowledge. The event has full official status but took only place in one country and sometimes erroneously omitted in statistics (results).

2004

In 2004, following the foundation of the International Quizzing Association (IQA), the event was held simultaneously in 5 countries: the United Kingdom (joined by quizzers from elsewhere, including Ireland), Belgium (joined by quizzers from The Netherlands), Estonia, India and Malaysia. Over 300 quizzers took part. The UK leg was staged at Manchester United's Old Trafford football stadium. The winner this year was Kevin Ashman.

  1. Kevin Ashman
  2. Pat Gibson
  3. Ashish
  4. Nico Pattyn
  5. Frank Van Nieuwenhove
  6. Ian Bayley
  7. David Stainer
  8. Arul Mani
  9. Stephen Pearson
  10. Lauri Naber

2005

The 2005 championship on July 2, saw further significant growth with the event benefiting from the sponsorship of MSN Search. Countries joining the original five competing nations included Australia, Finland, Indonesia, Norway and Singapore. Quizzers sat eight papers of 30 questions each, covering different subject matters: 'Culture', 'Entertainment', 'History', 'Lifestyle', 'Media', 'Sciences', 'Sport and Games', and 'World', with the lowest score from the eight genres being dropped - although these did come into play to settle tie-break situations. The eight genres were won outright or shared by quizzers from seven different countries (Belgium, England, Estonia, Finland, India, Ireland, and Norway).

Efforts to encourage the participation of women in the contest (competitive quizzing has hitherto been something of a male-dominated pastime) were rewarded in 2005 with a win for Trine Aalborg of Norway in the 'Lifestyle' category and a sixth place overall for Dorjana Širola of Croatia (who also finished 3rd among those competitors who had gathered at Silverstone motor racing circuit for the UK leg of the competition). In India, another woman, Debashree Mitra of Bangalore took 3rd place overall also.

  1. Kevin Ashman
  2. Pat Gibson
  3. Nico Pattyn
  4. Mark Van Springel
  5. Arul Mani
  6. Dorjana Širola
  7. Ove Põder
  8. Lauri Naber
  9. Erik Derycke
  10. Ian Bayley

2006

On June 3, 2006 the World Quizzing Championships were held at more than 15 locations. First time organisers were Lithuania, Germany, Switzerland, Liberia and Sri Lanka. People of a multitude of nationalities took part, including representatives from the USA, Australia, Russia, Singapore, Hungary and France. The title was, for the 3rd year running, won by Kevin Ashman.

  1. Kevin Ashman
  2. Pat Gibson
  3. Nico Pattyn
  4. Marc Van Springel
  5. Olav Bjortomt
  6. Ronny Swiggers
  7. Dorjana Širola (highest placed woman)
  8. Mark Bytheway
  9. Erik Derycke
  10. Ian Bayley

2007

On June 2, 2007 the World Quizzing Championships was held at locations includinga the Netherlands, the USA and Hungary for the first time. Pat Gibson took the crown from three-time winner Kevin Ashman.

  1. Pat Gibson
  2. Kevin Ashman
  3. Mark Bytheway
  4. Olav Bjortomt
  5. Jesse Honey
  6. Ronny Swiggers
  7. Ian Bayley
  8. Mark Grant
  9. Nico Pattyn
  10. Arul Mani

Dorjana Širola of Croatia was the highest placed woman in 12th position. Paul Paquet from Canada placed highest in the New York City leg, the first time the WQC was held in North America.

2008

The 2008 World Quizzing Championships were held on June 7, 2008 at more than 30 locations, including for the first time Australia, the Philippines, Canada, China, Bangladesh and Latvia. Mark Bytheway took the world title in a close race with Belgium's Ronny Swiggers and Finland's Tero Kalliolevo.

  1. Mark Bytheway – 173
  2. Ronny Swiggers – 172
  3. Tero Kalliolevo – 170
  4. Kevin Ashman – 167
  5. Pat Gibson – 165
  6. Nico Pattyn – 163
  7. Olav Bjortomt – 155
  8. Ian Bayley – 154
  9. Jesse Honey – 152
  10. Dorjana Širola – 150 (best performing woman)

2009

The 2009 World Quizzing Championships were held on June 6, 2009 at more than 45 locations, including 10 venues in the US, 9 in India and 4 in Russia. Living legend Kevin Ashman regained his title and became the first ever to win 4 World Quizzing Championships. Second again was Ronny Swiggers from Belgium. Third was last year's champion Mark Bytheway. Jeopardy! legend Jerome Vered, whose all-time single-day winnings record lasted 10 or 12 years (depnding on whether adjustment for the doubling of the clue values is used), placed eighth.

  1. Kevin Ashman – 177
  2. Ronny Swiggers – 174
  3. Mark Bytheway – 166
  4. Olav Bjortomt – 165
  5. Nico Pattyn – 165
  6. Pat Gibson – 164
  7. Tero Kalliolevo – 156
  8. Jerome Vered – 155
  9. Jesse Honey – 152
  10. Thomas Kolasaeter – 148

Dorjana Širola of Croatia was the highest placed woman in 22nd position with 135 points.

2010

The 2010 World Quizzing Championships were held on June 5, 2010 at almost seventy locations, adding Armenia, Bulgaria, Morocco and the Republic of Ireland for the first time. Over 1200 people participated. Five nations were represented among the competitors placed in the top 10 overall. The overall winner was Pat Gibson. [1][2]

Individual (Top 30, 1175 in total)
Pos Name Country Score
1 Pat Gibson  Ireland 180
2 Kevin Ashman  England 169
3 Ronny Swiggers  Belgium 169
4 Tero Kalliolevo  Finland 166
5 Olav Bjortomt  England 165
6 Nico Pattyn  Belgium 151
7 Mark Grant  Wales 149
8 Thomas Kolåsæter  Norway 147
9 Erik Derycke  Belgium 147
10 David Beck  Belgium 146
11 Tom Trogh  Belgium 145
12 Ove Põder  Estonia 144
13 William De'Ath  England 143
14 Bernard Kreps  Belgium 143
15 Scott Dawson  England 143
16 Ian Bayley  England 141
17 Dorjana Širola  Croatia 140
18 Harald Aastorp  Norway 139
19 Steve Perry  United States 139
20 David Stainer  England 137
21 Tore Dahl  Norway 136
22 Marnix Baes  Belgium 136
23 Barry Simmons  Scotland 135
24 Holger Waldenberger  Germany 135
25 Paul Arts  Belgium 134
26 Jussi Suvanto  Finland 134
27 Jerome Vered  United States 133
28 Frank van Nieuwenhoven  Belgium 132
29 Derk de Graaf  Netherlands 131
30 Jamie Dodding  England 129
Nation (Ranked by highest placed team member)
Pos Country Highest placed team member Score
1  Ireland 1 - Pat Gibson 180
2  Belgium 3 - Ronny Swiggers 169
3  Finland 4 - Tero Kalliolevo 166
4  Wales 7 - Mark Grant 149
5  Norway 8 - Thomas Kolåsæter 147
6  Estonia 12 - Ove Põder 144
7  Croatia 17 - Dorjana Širola 140
8  United States 19 - Steve Perry 139
9  Scotland 23 - Barry Simmons 135
10  Germany 24 - Holger Waldenberger 135
11  Netherlands 29 - Derk de Graaf 131
12  India 38 - Arul Mani 127
13  Ireland 46 - Paul Culoty 123
14  Canada 71 - Paul Paquet 114
15  Hungary 82 - Balázs Greff 110
16  Bulgaria 96 - Plamen Mladenov 106
17  Switzerland 111 - Peter Onyisi 102
18  Australia 116 - David Regal 101
19  Russia 120 - Alexey Prokhin 100
20  Philippines 122 - Leonardo Gapol 100
21  Singapore 127 - Caleb Liu 98
22  Latvia 129 - Krainov Maxim 98
23  Serbia 171 - Omer Ekic 92
24  France 197 - Didier Bruyere 88
25  Armenia 270 - Aram Harutyunyan 80
26  Northern Ireland 276 - Richard Ronaldson 79
27  Bangladesh 387 - Redwan Bin Abdul Baten 68
28  Macedonia 468 - Zoran Jordanov 61

Dorjana Širola of Croatia was the highest placed woman in 17th position with 140 points.

2011

The 2011 World Quizzing Championships took place on Saturday June 4th with the planned addition of venues in Denmark, Gibraltar, and Madagascar

Reigning champion Pat Gibson achieved the highest score in England with 186 and looks set to retain his title. Four times champion Kevin Ashman made 176. Tero Kalliolevo achieved the highest score in Finland with 176. Ronny Swiggers achieved the highest score in Belgium with 168. Steve Perry achieved the highest score in USA with 164. Mark Grant achieved the highest score in Wales with 163. Thomas Kolåsæter achieved the highest score in Norway with 158. [3]

Format

The World Quizzing Championships are in the form of a written test taken by individuals that is conducted at various points around the globe. Each competitor faces the same questions (translated into their mother tongue in many cases) at approximately the same time. There are 240 questions, divided into eight categories, and two hours in which to answer them (during one hour halves with a break in between). At the end of the allotted time, the papers are marked and each quizzers' top seven category scores will be added together to find the winner.

The categories [and general content areas] are a combination of academic and popular culture topics including:

Notes

  1. ^ http://www.iqa.be/iqa_wqc_uk2010.htm
  2. ^ http://magnusatthva.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/2010-world-quizzing-championship-a-quiz-masochists-ultimate-dream/
  3. ^ http://nqf.17.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=1035&start=15
  4. ^ http://kqaquizzes.org/2011/06/04/wqc2011-bangalore/
  5. ^ http://ru-wqc.livejournal.com/5375.html
  6. ^ http://ru-wqc.livejournal.com/5375.html
  7. ^ http://www.iqa.be/Points%20Global%202011.xls

External links