Ever watched a quiz show and thought, “I want to be THAT smart”? These aren’t people born with superhuman brains — they’re people who built their knowledge, one fact at a time. Here’s how they did it.

They’re Not Geniuses. They’re Practitioners.

When Kevin Ashman correctly answered his 3,650th consecutive history question on British TV, nobody gasped. They expected it. He hadn’t missed a history question in ten years.

When Victoria Groce became the first woman — and first American — to win the World Quizzing Championship, she credited one thing: her collection of 160,000 flashcards.

These aren’t savants. They’re not born different. They’re people who figured out what every cognitive scientist already knows: knowledge is a skill, and skills can be trained.

Here are 10 quiz legends from around the world who prove it — and the learning habits you can steal from them.

🇬🇧 Kevin Ashman — “The Grandmaster”

England | 6x World Quizzing Champion

The Legend

Kevin Ashman quit his civil service job to become a full-time professional quizzer. Most people thought he was crazy. Then he won six World Championships, set the all-time record on Mastermind (41 points), and went an entire decade without getting a single history question wrong on television.

The Learning Habit

Ashman treats knowledge like athletes treat fitness. He competes in multiple quiz leagues every week — not for money, but for practice. “You have to keep topping up,” he says. He uses dates as mental hooks, hanging facts onto a chronological framework that makes recall almost automatic.

What You Can Steal

Practice retrieval constantly. Ashman doesn’t just read — he tests himself, over and over, in competitive environments. The pressure of performance cements the knowledge.

🇺🇸 Victoria Groce — “The Queen”

USA | First Woman & First American to Win World Quizzing Championship (2024)

The Legend

In 2005, Victoria Groce won one game on Jeopardy!, then disappeared from quiz TV for nearly 20 years. She raised a daughter. She battled chronic migraines so severe she had to quit her job. But in the background, she was building something: a flashcard collection that would eventually reach 160,000 cards.

In 2024, she returned to Jeopardy!, won the Masters tournament, and weeks later became the first woman in history to win the World Quizzing Championship.

The Learning Habit

“When you make a flashcard, learn it, review it — you’re doing all three pieces of building a memory,” Groce explains. She’s ruthless about what goes in: “I am very vigilant about not adding information I already know.”

She also reads voraciously across disciplines and participates in international quiz leagues to expose herself to questions she’d never encounter otherwise.

What You Can Steal

Active recall is everything. Making the card. Testing yourself on the card. Reviewing the card. That three-step process is exactly how memory works — and it’s exactly what Cruxly automates for you.

🇧🇪 Ronny Swiggers — “The Belgian Wall”

Belgium | 2x World Quizzing Champion (2021, 2023)

The Legend

For fifteen years, Ronny Swiggers finished in the top 3 at the World Quizzing Championship. Second place. Third place. Second again. He watched Kevin Ashman and Pat Gibson take title after title while he came agonizingly close.

He never stopped. In 2021, at last, he won. Then he won again in 2023.

The Learning Habit

Swiggers is a polyglot — fluent in multiple languages — which gives him access to knowledge sources most English-only quizzers can’t reach. He treats quizzing as a lifelong pursuit, not a competition to win quickly.

What You Can Steal

Persistence beats talent. Swiggers lost for fifteen years before he won. The knowledge he built during those “losing” years is what eventually made him unbeatable.

🇮🇳 Vikram Joshi — “The Trailblazer”

India | First Non-European World Quizzing Champion (2014)

The Legend

For the first decade of the World Quizzing Championship, every single winner came from the UK or Ireland. The quiz world assumed European dominance was permanent.

Then Vikram Joshi proved them wrong.

In 2014, this Indian quizzer became the first non-European to win the World Championship, showing that India’s thriving school and college quiz culture could produce world-class talent. He tragically passed away in 2018 at just 41, but his legacy inspired a generation of Indian quizzers.

The Learning Habit

Joshi came up through India’s intense inter-school and inter-college quiz circuits — a system that starts testing students young and never stops. Regular competition, from an early age, built both his knowledge base and his ability to perform under pressure.

What You Can Steal

Start early, compete often. The more you test yourself in real conditions, the more natural recall becomes.

🇭🇷 Dorjana Širola — “The Linguist”

Croatia | Highest-Ranked Woman at World Championship for 7 Consecutive Years (2005-2011)

The Legend

Dorjana Širola holds a distinction nobody else can claim: she’s the only person to win both BBC’s University Challenge AND University Challenge: The Professionals.

For seven straight years, she was the highest-ranked woman at the World Quizzing Championship, consistently finishing in the top 20 globally against thousands of competitors.

The Learning Habit

As a linguist and anglicist, Širola approaches knowledge through language. Understanding etymology and word roots gives her shortcuts to answers others have to memorize individually. She combines deep expertise in languages with broad general knowledge.

What You Can Steal

Find your angle. Širola doesn’t try to know everything about everything — she uses her linguistic expertise as a foundation that makes other knowledge easier to acquire.

🇫🇮 Tero Kalliolevo — “The Nordic Champion”

Finland | Most Successful Quiz Player in Nordic History

The Legend

Quiz shows are dominated by the UK and USA. Everyone knows that.

Tero Kalliolevo didn’t get the memo.

This Finnish quizzer has won bronze at the World Championship, multiple European medals, and consistently ranks among the top 10 players on Earth — proving that quiz excellence can come from anywhere.

The Learning Habit

Kalliolevo competes as part of international club teams, combining Finnish and Estonian players to challenge the dominant British squads. He’s proof that collaboration and diverse perspectives can beat pure individual talent.

What You Can Steal

Learn with others. Studying alone is good. Studying with people who know different things than you is better.

🇮🇪 Pat Gibson — “The Triple Crown”

Ireland | Only Person to Win Mastermind + Brain of Britain + Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (£1 Million)

The Legend

There are quiz champions. And then there’s Pat Gibson.

He’s the only person in history to win Mastermind, Brain of Britain, AND the £1 million jackpot on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Three completely different formats. Three dominant victories.

On Millionaire, he was so calm that host Chris Tarrant seemed almost bored. Gibson reached the million-pound question with two lifelines still unused — something no other winner has done.

The Learning Habit

Gibson built software to record every interesting fact he encountered. On some days, he added 100 facts to his database. But he says memory isn’t really the secret: “If you answered a question about Alexander the Great, it’s because you were interested in Alexander the Great. Curiosity — there’s a big payoff for curiosity.”

What You Can Steal

Follow your curiosity, then systematize it. Gibson reads what interests him, but he captures it in a system he can review. Interest plus structure equals retention.

🇬🇧🇳🇴 Olav Bjortomt — “The Doctor”

England (Norwegian/Filipino heritage) | 4x World Quizzing Champion + Working Neurologist

The Legend

Most quiz champions do it full-time. Olav Bjortomt does it while working as a neurologist.

He won the very first World Quizzing Championship in 2003 at age 24 — making him the youngest winner ever. Then he won again in 2015, 2018, and 2019. He also writes questions for University Challenge and The Chase.

The Learning Habit

Bjortomt proves you don’t have to choose between depth and breadth. His medical career gives him deep expertise in science and biology. His quiz habit gives him breadth across every other subject. The two reinforce each other.

What You Can Steal

Knowledge compounds. The more you know, the easier it is to learn more. Bjortomt’s medical training makes science questions easy, which frees up study time for other subjects.

🇺🇸 Ken Jennings — “The GOAT”

USA | 74 Consecutive Jeopardy! Wins | Now Hosts the Show

The Legend

In 2004, a software engineer from Salt Lake City walked onto Jeopardy! and didn’t leave for 74 games. Ken Jennings won $2.52 million in regular play, answered over 2,700 questions correctly, and became the most famous quiz contestant in American history.

He’s now the host of the show he once dominated.

The Learning Habit

Jennings credits his success to Quiz Bowl — the competitive academic trivia circuit he participated in at Brigham Young University. “It’s like training for a sport,” he says. He also uses flashcards, systematically studies his weak areas, and has written six books about trivia and knowledge.

What You Can Steal

Treat knowledge like training. Jennings didn’t just “know stuff.” He practiced retrieval under competitive pressure, identified weaknesses, and worked on them systematically.

🇬🇧 Anne Hegerty — “The Governess”

England | Grand Master Rank | Proof That Different Minds Learn Brilliantly

The Legend

Anne Hegerty was diagnosed with autism in her 40s. She’d struggled for years with jobs and relationships. Then she found quizzing — and everything changed.

Now she’s one of the most feared Chasers on British television, ranked among the top 50 quizzers in the world, and a three-time Brain of Bolton champion. Her nickname on The Chase? “The Governess.”

The Learning Habit

Hegerty started with Mastermind in 1988 and never stopped. She reads the Radio Times, The Week, and Heat magazine every week, then sets herself 100 questions on each. Decades of consistent practice turned natural ability into world-class performance.

What You Can Steal

Consistency beats intensity. Hegerty didn’t cram. She built knowledge steadily over decades. Small amounts, regularly, compound into expertise.

The Pattern: What All Quiz Champions Do

Look at the habits above. Notice the pattern?

Habit	What It Looks Like	Why It Works
Active Recall	Testing yourself instead of re-reading	Forces your brain to retrieve, not just recognize
Spaced Repetition	Reviewing at increasing intervals	Fights forgetting curve scientifically
Structured Systems	Organized knowledge frameworks	Makes retrieval faster and connections clearer
Daily Practice	Small amounts, consistently	Compounds over time into expertise

They all test themselves constantly. They all use some form of spaced repetition. They all treat knowledge as a skill to be trained, not a gift to be born with.

You Can Do This Too

You don’t need to win a World Championship. But you can use the same techniques these champions use:

Don’t just read — test yourself. Reading feels productive. Testing yourself IS productive.
Make it a habit. Anne Hegerty didn’t become world-class overnight. She showed up for decades.
Track your weak spots. Ken Jennings systematically worked on subjects he was bad at.
Use tools that force recall. Victoria Groce has 160,000 flashcards. You have Cruxly.

This Is What Cruxly Does

Cruxly takes your notes and turns them into quizzes — automatically. No flashcard-making required.

Scan your notes. Get quizzed. Build knowledge.

Every quiz champion in this article uses active recall. Now you can too.

Try Cruxly Free →

Because the people who seem impossibly smart? They just practiced remembering — more than you have. Yet.