This weekend, Australia’s national quiz team takes on the USA in the Quizzing World Cup final.

Having been crowned world champions of cricket, rugby union, field hockey, and billiards, to name a few, the proud sporting nation of Australia might just add trivia to the list.

Making it to the final two out of 64 national teams, Australia’s quiz team captain, Canberran Mick Logue, told Canberra Daily they found their bearings after a shaky start in the group stages.

“We’ve just had a real Cinderella run,” he said. “We’ve probably been underdogs in every match since the round of 16.”

They qualified for the grand final by knocking out the highly touted English national team, Broken Warriors, who individually have won more championships than they haven’t, and feature on UK trivia TV show, Eggheads.

“We gave ourselves a puncher’s chance, we just went out there to do our best, and we came up with a solid game plan to get the win.”

Modestly describing the team as a “champion team” rather than team of champions, Logue competes alongside Issa Schultz, the “Supernerd” from The Chase on Channel 7.

If you’re wondering what quizzing is like at the elite level, it’s a cut above a game of Trivial Pursuit.

“It’s not Thursday night at the pub,” Logue smiled. “The questions have to be able to separate the best and the second best in the world, so they go incredibly in-depth.”

Quizzing World Cup matches comprise two rounds of 12 topics. Competing in teams of four, each round every team member picks a topic to answer individually, receiving two questions each.

After that, four topics are left on the board to be selected and answered as teams.

Once they’re all done, there’s a mystery round with three questions on any of the previous topics.

“There’s a lot of strategy in that, trying to paint your opposition into a corner, and a fair bit of luck,” Logue said.

Getting started on the pub circuit young, Logue quickly began running his own trivia nights though his business, Trivial Excuse.

From there, he found out more about the national and international circuit, with his aptitude quickly elevating him to the big leagues.

“I was never a great student or particularly academic, my brain was always attuned to more hard and fast facts,” he said.

“I’m not the best crammer, but I definitely pick up a lot just writing questions for my own business.”

According to Logue, preparing and training for competitive trivia is “almost a way of life”, requiring a curious mind and thirst for knowledge.

“You’ve really got to live and breathe it 24/7, you’ve got to have an inquisitive mind and it’s got to be switched on all the time,” he said.

“Your typical competitive quizzer will come across a term or something they don’t know, and while someone else might let it slide, they’ll be straight onto Wikipedia looking it up.”

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