Any Questions? #37

May 11, 2012

How meta is this? You've logged on to our website to hear a quiz about famous computers. Also: a wormhole just opened up.

Last week's challenge
Think of a seven-letter word for an area often seen adjacent to a racetrack. Change the middle letter to an L, and the result will name something often used to keep an area secure. What is the area and what is the thing?
Answer: The area is a PADDOCK, and the thing is a PADLOCK.

On-air questions: On May 11th, 1997, Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in the last game of their rematch, becoming the first computer to defeat a reigning world chess champion. That event inspired this week's quiz, which is all about other famous computers.
1. 1983 movie in which Matthew Broderick averts nuclear war by ordering a computer program called Joshua to play tic-tac-toe against itself
2. Computer whose G3 model was available in 1999 in five "fruit" colors, including grape, tangerine, and lime
3. Computer developer who named the first computer with a graphical user interface, the Apple Lisa, after his daughter
4. Canadian city famously given as Watson's response to a Final Jeopardy! clue about airports, in the category "U. S. Cities"
5. Classic educational cartoon series that included four episodes starring characters called Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips

Extra credit
1. Computer ranked as the #13 villain on the American Film Institute's list "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains"
2. Novel that contains what is possibly the oldest reference to a device resembling a computer, when it describes  The Engine, a machine encountered by the title character on an island called Balnibarbi

This week's challenge
Take the five-letter name of a famous computer. If you read it backwards, you'll get the last name of a famous actor. What is the computer and who is the actor?




On-air questions
1. WarGames
2. iMac
3. Steve Jobs
4. Toronto
5. Schoolhouse Rock

Extra credit
1. HAL 9000 (from 2001: A Space Odyssey)
2. Gulliver's Travels