Trivia Hall of Fame 2026

Trivia Hall of Fame 2026

The Trivia Hall of Fame TM recognizes achievements in, and contributions to, the world of trivia and quizzing. Vote ONCE for FIVE of the following, and the top five will be inducted.

    Vote Quota: 5
  • As far as anyone can tell, the Merseyside Quiz League is the oldest team quizzing league in the Anglosphere, originating at the Mount Hotel in Bootle, Liverpool, in 1959. The MQL format is called Mimir, for the Norse god known for his wisdom and knowledge. And that format has become standard in many team trivia formats. Brady, Howard and Powell were among the founders of MQL, but over the decades many others have been instrumental in the league’s continuing success.
  • In the 1990s, You Don't Know Jack was synonymous with CD-ROM trivia games and for most of those games the star was Cookie, voiced by Gottlieb. Unlike just about everything else in the trivia world at the time, the game was funny, irreverent and aimed at a (then) young Gen X audience. It has since expanded to other formats, notably the Jackbox Party Pack, and Gottlieb was also the announcer for the short-lived You Don't Know Jack TV show in 2001.
  • In 1992, Henztel founded the Iowa State Academic Quiz Bowl Club. He went on to become a member of National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT) in 1997 and served as president from 1998 to 2019. He was also chief editor from 2002 to 2014 and chief technical officer from 1998 to 2022. He has been recognized with lifetime achievement awards for his work promoting academic competition. Many giants in the trivia community have come out of NAQT, including Ken Jennings, who had written and edited for NAQT.
  • During the pandemic, Jackson founded the Mimir’s Well Quiz League, an online version of the Mimir format, with Goldman and Charlson. This proved monumentally influential and spread internationally. Jackson won the 2025 World Quizzing Championship and the 2024 Quiz Olympiad. Goldman, meanwhile, is one of the few people to have won both University Challenge and Only Connect. Charlson also founded UKQB, which runs quiz bowl in the UK.
  • In 2013, as the captain of the Welsh national quiz team, Kingston co-founded the Celtic Nations Quizzing Championships. He was a Fifteen to One champion and his pub quiz team won four national titles. But he is best known for the All Things Quiz YouTube channel, which has brought together the international quiz/trivia community by interviewing key figures and covering major events. He recognizes quizzer and team of the week and has annual awards. His Quiz Academy videos have helped people improve as trivia/quiz players.
  • Labbett has been the Beast on versions of The Chase in the UK, US and Australia. He appeared with several quiz show legends on the US version of Master Minds. He also appeared twice on the UK version of Masterminds, as well as on Countdown, Stake Out, Grand Slam, Brain Teaser and, twice, on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? His team, the Rugby Boys, won Only Connect and he finished second The National Lottery People's Quiz and reached the quarter finals of University Challenge.
  • Mulky, WingCo to his friends, was one of the eight quiz enthusiasts who founded the Karnataka Quiz Association in 1983. He also single-handedly set up the school, college and open circuits in and around Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), which made the city the Quiz Capital of India. KQA runs Mahaquizzer and the top Mahaquizzer scorer wins the Mulky Trophy for Quizzing Excellence, presented at ASKQANCE, the KQA Anniversary Open Quiz Festival. His model of small, regularly held events on a wide range of topics still influences quizzing in Karnataka, and KQA remains a not-for-profit to this day, as he wanted it.
  • Quiz Daddy, Quiz Khalifa, Host Malone, the Trap Trebek. Called HQ's "secret weapon" by TechCrunch, Rogowski was the face of the HQ trivia app. As a stand-up comedian who could improvise on his feet, he had an ability to vamp over the site's technical difficulties in its early days, which became his effusive trademark. At times, more than a million people were playing HQ and its success produced a wave of imitators, none of which lasted. HQ itself came undone after Rogowski parted ways with it.
  • In 1966, Stewart became the producer of Reach for the Top, a Canadian version of quiz bowl, which would air on CBC until 1985. After the show was cancelled, Stewart continued to produce, with his partner, a mostly non-televised version of the game called Schoolreach until he retired in 1995. The show was an early hosting gig for Alex Trebek and offered countless Canadian teens a chance to shine, including future prime ministers Kim Campbell and Stephen Harper.
  • In just his third appearance on Jeopardy, Ding set a record with a Coryat score of $42,400. (A Coryat score is based on the raw value of clues, excluding Daily Double wagering and using the face value of those clues instead). In that game, he also beat Ken Jennings's record for the most correct responses in a game (counting Final Jeopardy), at 45. His streak lasted 31 games, during which time he amassed $882,605, rapidly climbing the Jeopardy record books.
  • Trevarthen was the first woman to win Brain of Britain in 25 years and became one of the few (and the only woman) to also win Counterpoint, a radio music quiz show. She won on Eggheads and Pointless, with her husband Noel, and reached the final of Mastermind in 2022, where she was runner-up. She was a powerful presence at OQL and IQA events, and the OQL UK trophy is now named for her. Friends and family remember her as a friendly, encouraging face at trivia and quizzing events.
  • Possibly the greatest player University Challenge has ever had, Trimble was called the Human Google as captain of the 2009 Corpus Christi team, answering two-thirds of all her team’s questions. In the quarter finals, she amassed a record 15 starters-for-10, defeating Exeter University 350 to 15 in one of the most lop-sided UC matches ever. The only thing that could stop her was a technicality: the team was disqualified because one of its members had already left the college while the series was being filmed.

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