Tips to win a sports quiz

Quiz questions revolve around champions, records and firsts far more than everyday matches. Learn who won what, who did it first and which records still stand – those are the facts that get tested over and over.

Practise actively by answering questions rather than reading passively. Read the explanation even when you're right, because it often holds an adjacent detail that turns up in the next quiz.

Most questions fall into a few recurring patterns: "who won first", "which team has the most titles", "in what year did X happen" and "who holds the record for Y". Once you spot the type, you know what kind of answer you're hunting for.

Watch especially for superlatives – words like "first", "most", "youngest" and "only" signal that the answer is a specific name or number, not a general guess. Those questions reward whoever studied the detail.

On multiple choice, guessing almost always pays off when there's no penalty for wrong answers. Rule out the options you know are wrong first, and your odds jump immediately – you can often eliminate one or two and take a stab at the rest.

If it's an estimate question, settle on a sensible middle value rather than an extreme. And trust your gut: the first answer that comes to mind is more often right than the one you talk yourself into after changing your mind several times.

Time pressure makes people miss questions they actually know. Read the whole question before answering – overlooked words like "except" or "never" flip the entire meaning and cost you dear points.

Play to your strengths first. Bank the certain points straightaway and save the head-scratching for the hard questions at the end, so you build a lead before the nerves set in.

What separates a good quizzer from a champion is learning from your misses. Every question here comes with an explanation and a source, so a wrong answer becomes a chance never to miss the same thing again.

Redo the quizzes where you stumbled and focus on the questions you got wrong. To test yourself broadly before the next quiz night, mixed sports trivia works well, and if you're running it yourself, how to host a sports quiz helps you set the format.