A Butt-Scooting Dog Inspired an Aria on ABC's Music Quiz Show

The ABC put up another music quiz on Sunday morning, and the questions stretch from Adele's back catalogue to the far corners of Eurovision. It's at least the fourth weekly instalment — earlier rounds went live on 26 July, 2 August and 9 August — and the whole exercise exists to keep you thinking about a television show that has been part of Australian Wednesday nights, on and off, for two decades.

That show is Spicks and Specks, and the current season has been strange even by its own standards. Rolling Stone Australia reported that panellists this year make music out of hospital equipment, reimagine a classical aria inspired by a dog scooting across the floor, and investigate an encounter between Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber in Japan. The Sunday quiz is the calmer, home-delivered version of that same energy.

Why should you care about a trivia round? Because it's free, it takes about five minutes, and it doesn't want your email address or a credit card. ABC iview carries the show at no cost, new episodes go to air Wednesdays at 8.30pm, and the quiz is a low-stakes way to find out how much Australian music history you've actually retained since school.

What's Actually in This Week's Music Quiz

The format is deliberately plain: a run of questions covering artists, chart history and the kind of pop-culture detail that lodges in your head without asking permission. The published spread goes from Adele to Eurovision, which in practice means the questions hop decades and continents. There's no leaderboard, no login and no streak to protect. You answer, you get a number, you argue with whoever's in the room.

"Huge news for everyone with a ridiculous amount of pop culture trivia crammed in their head and no regular use for it: it's music quiz time." — ABC News

That framing is the point. This is a weekly release valve for a very specific kind of Australian brain, and the ABC has clearly worked out that it costs almost nothing to publish and travels well on a Sunday.

Why a Show From 2005 Is Still Setting the Questions

Spicks and Specks started on the ABC back in 2005, with Adam Hills hosting and Myf Warhurst and Alan Brough captaining the teams. The original run finished in 2011, and the ABC eventually brought the same three back. Last year's season was billed as the 20th anniversary and premiered on 15 June 2025. The current one launched on Wednesday 8 July 2026.

Who Turns Up on This Season

The guest list is the reason the quiz has decent material to draw on. It leans heavily Australian, mixes generations, and puts working musicians next to comedians who clearly have no idea what the answer is.

The musicians in the guest chairs

Amy Shark, Ruel, Dami Im, Kate Miller-Heidke, Casey Donovan, Chris Cheney, Katie Noonan, Rhonda Burchmore and Caleb Harper have all taken a seat this season. That's a spread running from 1970s cabaret to artists who broke on streaming — useful, because the quiz questions do exactly the same thing.

The comedians, and who plays live

Zoë Coombs Marr, Tommy Little, Denise Scott, Noah Szto and Frank Woodley handle the comedy side. The live performance slots have gone to Missy Higgins, Regurgitator, Wendy Matthews, Robert Forster, Ruby Fields, Keli Holiday, Playlunch and Miss Kaninna.

The games that refuse to die

Long-running segments Know Your Product, Substitute and Sir Mix N Matchalot came back for the anniversary season, alongside newer inventions with names like Frank Piñata, Musical Chers and Will.A.I.am Shakespeare. If a question feels weirdly specific, it probably started life as one of these.

The Eurovision Answers Worth Memorising

Eurovision is the section that catches people out, and Australia's record there is short but unusually strong. The country first competed in 2015, so 2026 marked 11 years of taking part. The best result remains Dami Im's second place in 2016 with "Sound of Silence", which scored 511 points — just 23 points short of winning the whole thing.

For context, 23 points is roughly what a single national jury can hand out in one go. Australia has never been closer. This year Delta Goodrem represented the country in Vienna with "Eclipse" and finished fourth, while Dami Im was named Australia's spokesperson in May. She's also one of the guests on this Spicks and Specks season, which neatly closes the loop.

How to Score Better Next Sunday

If you want to stop guessing, the fix is fairly boring: watch the source material. Most weeks the questions reward the same handful of knowledge areas, and none of them require you to be a serious record collector.

• Eurovision finishing positions, not just the songs — placings are where people fall over
• Australian acts who charted overseas, from the 1980s onward
• Songwriting credits, because the writer is often not the singer
• Which artist covered whom, and in what order

Set a reminder for Wednesday at 8.30pm on ABC TV, or catch up on iview whenever suits. Then check back next Sunday morning, when the ABC posts the next round. It's a free five minutes, it costs you nothing but pride, and it's the rare bit of homework that pays off in the pub.