Games, Diversions & Perl Culture

Chapter 33. The Third Perl/Internet Quiz Show

Jon Orwant

Here are the toss-ups and bonus questions from the Third Internet Quiz Show, held in the summer of 2000 at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. Answers are at the end of the article.

Three questions in the contest refer to “Kyle,” the captain of my College Bowl team whom I described briefly when the quiz show began. I told a story about Kyle to make a point about why, during the 1999 quiz show, I discarded a question because I knew that one player had prior knowledge of the answer.

The abridged story was this: When Kyle walked into the classroom where our College Bowl match was being held, he noticed “.367” written on the chalkboard. He said, to no one in particular, “Hey, what’s Ty Cobb’s lifetime batting average doing on the board?” Later, in the middle of the round, the emcee discarded a question because it relied on that statistic, causing us to lose the round.

As with previous quizzes, you can keep score by giving yourself one point per question and using the ranks at the beginning of Chapter 31.

Toss-up Questions

Toss-up 1: This company hired David Boies to defend it against a lawsuit by the RIAA. What is this company, which made Metallica even angrier than they normally are?

Toss-up 2: This computer pundit used the phrase “open sores” in his InfoWorld column. He was one of the architects of Ethernet and founded 3Com. Who is this bitter, bitter man?

Toss-up 3: It’s the look or overall style of an XUL file, and they’re created ...