My Indian friend Jamal recently participated in the well-known TV quiz show Who wants to be a millionaire?. You might have heard or read about Jamal's spectacular success; the media reported on it extensively.
Here is what Jamal told us about his 2.000 Euro question:
After the commercial break, Prem Kumar started a little friendly chat about my job. I said that I enjoyed software design because sometimes it was a lot like solving puzzles. He made some crack about me having to solve quite a bit of them now, and then the lights went down again and the next question came up. Prem pulled off a big show with this question, and he obviously enjoyed repeating the word "2000" over and over again, since it also showed up as part of the question text. The question seemed to be much too hard for a 2.000 Euro question. I guess that the question makers and show producers just had chosen it at this level so that Prem could play around with the words.
Now about the answers, I didn't think it was a romantic comedy, so that left option A out. I was also pretty sure D was "just" an award winning epic and certainly not on top. Once again, however, I had to reach back into the depths of my memory to decide between the two remaining choices. Prem made some comment that almost interrupted my concentration; I just replied "Yeah, I could do that", but without committing myself to anything.
I could see an old newspaper article coming into focus in my mind and suddenly remembered that C had domestically beaten B, though not by much. Thinking that the 50/50 option that Prem had mentioned would probably only leave me with answers B and C anyway, I decided to trust my memory instead. Turns out, I had a good one. At least this time. Later I found out that answer B indeed had been the runner-up, while A and D had been farther down the list.
What was the 2.000 Euro question?
What were the four possible answers A, B, C, D?
