The Journal has published an interactive quiz challenging readers to test their knowledge of refrigerators, appearing during a week in which Europe was on edge over threats to airlines and media outlets that may have extended to the appliances of SuperValu stores.
The feature, which describes the fridge as “the coolest appliance in the kitchen,” deliberately avoids the recent security reports to focus instead on the history, science, and pop-culture footprint of the household staple.
The quiz begins by noting that William Cullen designed the first refrigeration machine in 1755, though it did not work very well, and asks readers to identify the country he was from. It also asks which team the former American football player William Anthony Perry, nicknamed “The Refrigerator,” most prolifically played for.
Several questions examine the appliance’s role in literature and cinema. Readers must define the literary term “fridging,” choosing from options that include freezing out a main character or placing a character in a fridge for an extended period.
The quiz also asks which Indiana Jones film showed Indy using a fridge to shield himself from a nuclear bomb, which artist released the 1984 song “Li’l Refrigerator,” and in what year WALL-E, in which a fridge protects a small green plant, hit theatres.
Remaining questions cover practical advice and unusual records, including which food item the manufacturer Whirlpool says should not be kept in the fridge, whether an empty fridge consumes more energy than a stocked one, the country of origin for a pictured set of fridge magnets, and the total number of magnets in Louise J Greenfarb’s Guinness World Record-holding collection.
Upon completion, the quiz sorts respondents into categories ranging from “Turtle-y awful” and “Baaaad” to “Clever cat,” “Fin-flipping-tastic,” and “Top dog.”
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