World Quizzing Championship

Answer: Olav Bjortomt

There were only 45 participants at the first ever World Quizzing Championship. The event has since expanded to feature numerous venues around the world. Over one thousand participants competed in 2010 from countries including Armenia and Singapore.

Answer: Eight

The quiz takes the form of eight genres with thirty questions in each. Each player attains a score for each genre and adds up their highest seven genre scores to work out their total score. The genre that the player does the worst in is then dropped from their score, meaning that the player who particularly dislikes sport will not be penalised if they score significantly lower in that genre.

The eight genres are culture, entertainment, history, lifestyle, media, science, sport & games and world.

Answer: England

The first eight winners were Olav Bjortomt (2003), Kevin Ashman (2004-6, 2009), Pat Gibson (2007,2010) and Mark Bytheway (2008). It should be noted that Pat Gibson was born in Ireland, however he was down as representing England when he has been champion.

Belgium have come the closest to breaking the English stranglehold on the event, with Nico Pattyn and Ronny Swiggers both coming close to victory on a couple of occasions. In 2008 Ronny Swiggers actually answered the most questions correct overall but finished second to Mark Bytheway following the dropping of their weakest genre scores.

Answer: False

On the contrary, all the questions are fill in the blank questions. Although there is some good guesswork still required, you don't have the answer right in front of your nose. Every mark has to be dredged lovingly from the back of your mind.

Answer: Two hours

240 questions in two hours makes 30 seconds per question, so there's not a great deal of time for dawdling. Spend five minutes deciding on whether the capital of Romania is Budapest or Bucharest and you'll have to make up four and a half minutes somewhere else!

The quiz is actually split evenly into two sections of one hour each. The first half will be marked in the interim, so you will have some idea of how you're getting along. This gives you a little break, or might allow you a swift trip to the bar to drown your sorrows.

Answer: Croatia

Dorjana was the leading woman from 2005 to 2010. She has featured in the top ten overall on several occasions in what has been a male dominated event to date.

She is also unique in being the first person to be a winner on both the British quiz shows "University Challenge" (2002) and "University Challenge: The Professionals" (2006).

Answer: False

One of the aims of the World Quizzing Championship is to eliminate questions that are too country specific. For example, whilst an English football fan might appreciate a question on Stockport County Football Club, this is probably too obscure for most people taking the quiz. Given the international scope of the quiz, it is deemed unreasonable to expect people to master all international language variations.

The key point is getting the answer correct phonetically.

Answer: Jerome Vered

Jerome Vered achieved this feat in 2009, though he could only follow this up with a 27th place finish in 2010 when he finished as the second American behind Steve Perry. With the quality of the contestants on shows like "Jeopardy!", surely American contestants will feature prominently in future tournaments.

Answer: False

Unless specifically mentioned, you should only give the person's surname. Writing the forename is just a waste of ink! So if the answer was Joseph Stalin, Stalin can be accepted as well as Joseph Stalin, or any other equally acceptable variation of his name. If in a moment of madness you write Vladimir Stalin, unfortunately you lose a point that you would otherwise have gained, so remember - surnames only!

Answer: Syria

Although the World Quizzing Championship has been expanding every year, with over 30 nations now represented, there are still some very prominent countries that were not featured in 2010. These include China, New Zealand and Spain. Each year, more countries have been getting involved so who knows how things will change in the future?