War Games Trivia
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49 free War Games trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This war games trivia quiz is built mainly around WarGames, the 1983 techno-thriller in which Matthew Broderick's teenage hacker dials into a NORAD supercomputer and nearly starts World War III. It covers the writers who started out with a script about Stephen Hawking, the director who was fired three weeks in, the Beatle who wanted to play Falken, the meaning of WOPR, the backdoor password, the tic-tac-toe ending, the Oscar nominations, the Reagan briefing that produced America's first computer-security directive, and the terms "wardialing" and "wardriving" that the film left behind. Because the searcher who types "war games" may also mean the real thing, the last section moves to actual war games: the Prussian Kriegsspiel that started military wargaming, the 1983 NATO exercise Able Archer that spooked the Soviet Politburo, the Soviet officer who ignored a false missile alert that same autumn, and the $250 million Millennium Challenge 2002 in which a retired Marine general sank the U.S. fleet with motorcycle couriers and small boats. Roughly a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has seen the film; the rest are for people who know their DEFCON from their NSDD-145. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the film, its makers and the historical exercises before publication.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who stars as teenage hacker David Lightman in the 1983 film WarGames?
Matthew Broderick
Matthew Broderick plays David Lightman; the writers modelled the character on David Scott Lewis, a real hacking enthusiast they had met while researching the script.
Q 02Who replaced the fired original director of WarGames early in shooting?
John Badham
John Badham took over and judged that the existing footage went wrong because its two young leads weren't having any fun, so he set out to make their hacking look like a thrill.
Q 03Which future Beverly Hills Cop director was fired from WarGames three weeks into shooting?
Martin Brest
Martin Brest was dismissed after three weeks of filming over creative differences; his footage was darker in tone than the light film its writers had developed.
Q 04Who portrays Jennifer Mack, David's classmate, in WarGames?
Ally Sheedy
Ally Sheedy plays Jennifer Mack; she later said she couldn't make heads or tails of the script, which made it easy to play the scenes where Jennifer keeps asking David what he is doing.
Q 05Who portrays NORAD systems chief Dr. John McKittrick?
Dabney Coleman
Dabney Coleman plays Dr. John McKittrick, who argues for automating missile launches after a drill in which many silo crews refused to turn their keys.
Q 06Which English stage actor plays the reclusive scientist Stephen Falken in WarGames?
John Wood
John Wood plays Falken; a Royal Shakespeare Company star, he had won a Tony in 1976 for Travesties, in a role Tom Stoppard wrote specifically for him.
Q 07Which former Beatle showed interest in playing Falken while the WarGames script was being written?
John Lennon
John Lennon had shown interest in playing Falken; he was shot dead in New York in December 1980, while the script was still being developed.
Q 08Which actor plays General Beringer, the NORAD commander who distrusts WOPR in WarGames?
Barry Corbin
Barry Corbin plays Beringer, whom the writers based on NORAD's real commander, General James Hartinger, after he buttonholed them at the base and took them to the bar to talk about the script.
Q 09What does the acronym WOPR stand for in WarGames?
War Operation Plan Response
War Operation Plan Response spends its days playing out every possible war as a game; in the film it is handed the missiles after many launch officers refuse to turn their keys in a drill.
Q 10Which real physicist inspired the reclusive scientist Falken in early drafts of WarGames?
Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking was the model: Falken began as a dying astrophysicist, until the film's first director dropped the wheelchair for looking too much like Dr. Strangelove.
Q 11WarGames began as a 1979 script about a dying scientist and a too-smart kid; what was it called?
The Genius
The Genius had no computers in it at all: hacking entered the story only after the writers met a futurist who linked bright kids, computer games and the military.
Q 12What machine does David use to change his grades and reach WOPR?
IMSAI 8080
IMSAI 8080: its makers were working on a computer system for car dealerships when they built this clone of the Altair 8800, sold at first as a kit.
Q 13In which California town is the games company David is hunting when he stumbles onto WOPR?
Sunnyvale
Sunnyvale is home to Protovision, the games company whose unreleased titles David wants to play early; instead he reaches an unnamed computer that offers him a list of games.
Q 21Which game do Falken and David make WOPR face itself at, to teach it futility?
Tic-tac-toe
Falken and David set the computer to play Tic-tac-toe against itself; after a long run of draws it simulates every nuclear scenario, finds no winner and gives up.
Q 22WOPR concludes that nuclear war is "a strange game" in which the only winning move is what?
Not to play
The computer's verdict is 'Not to play': having found every nuclear exchange unwinnable, it relinquishes control and asks, "How about a nice game of chess?"
Q 23Which film led 1983's box office, where WarGames ranked fifth?
Return of the Jedi
Q 14What is the backdoor password that gets David into WOPR?
Joshua
The password is Joshua, the name of Falken's dead son; David's hacker friends Jim and Malvin had explained that programmers leave such backdoors into their systems.
Q 15Which game does David pick from the list, setting off the crisis?
Global Thermonuclear War
David chooses Global Thermonuclear War and plays the Soviet side, targeting American cities; the same menu also listed chess, checkers and poker.
Q 16WOPR sits inside which real military installation in Colorado?
Cheyenne Mountain
NORAD's command centre in the film is inside Cheyenne Mountain; the set built for it, with its huge video wall, was far grander than the real facility then was.
Q 17After escaping NORAD, David and Jennifer find Falken living under an assumed name where?
An island off the Oregon coast
An island off the Oregon coast is where Falken lives under the name Robert Hume, having resigned himself to nuclear war as inevitable.
Q 18How does David finally get out of NORAD after escaping the infirmary?
By joining a tourist group
By joining a tourist group on its way out: David beats the infirmary's door lock and then simply leaves with the visitors the staff had grumbled about earlier.
Q 19In WarGames, what proves to NORAD that the Soviet strike on its screens is fake?
The targeted bases report in unharmed
The targeted bases report in unharmed: Falken persuades the general to ride out the attack with the base commanders on the line, and they are still talking after the screens show the impacts.
Q 20Why can't NORAD simply unplug WOPR in the WarGames finale?
The silos would launch automatically
The silos would launch automatically: McKittrick warns that their computers would read a shutdown as the destruction of NORAD and carry out their last instructions.
Return of the Jedi led the year with about $250M; WarGames, made for roughly $12M, earned almost $80M at home and outgrossed that summer's James Bond film, Octopussy.
Q 24Which of these was one of WarGames' three Oscar nominations?
Best Original Screenplay
Best Original Screenplay was a nomination for Lawrence Lasker and Walter Parkes, who admitted that when they started in 1979 they didn't know home computers could connect to one another.
Q 25Which critic gave WarGames four out of four stars and called it "an amazingly entertaining thriller"?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert also ranked it among the best films of the year so far in his Chicago Sun-Times review, while adding that he was not claiming it was accurate about computers, only convincing.
Q 26Which president watched WarGames, asked the Joint Chiefs whether it could happen, and ordered a security review?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan saw the film at Camp David in June 1983 and asked General John Vessey whether it could happen; the reply a week later was that the problem was worse than he thought.
Q 27WarGames helped prompt NSDD-145 in 1984, the first presidential directive on what?
Computer security
Computer security reached the Oval Office because the president, fresh from watching the film, asked his generals whether its break-in could really happen; the directive was signed in September 1984.
Q 28Which hacking term was coined after David's method of finding WOPR in WarGames?
Wardialing
Wardialing, having a modem call every number in a block to find other computers, took its name from the film; hackers had called it demon dialing, and Wi-Fi's wardriving was later named after it.
Q 29Which Milwaukee teenage hacker group made headlines in 1983 for breaking into Los Alamos computers?
The 414s
The 414s took their name from Milwaukee's telephone area code; with the film fresh in cinemas, the press labelled their Los Alamos break-in 'the WarGames case'.
Q 30The man who took over directing WarGames was already famous for which 1970s hit?
Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever, with John Travolta, had made his name in 1977; in 1983 he had two thrillers in cinemas within weeks, the police-helicopter film Blue Thunder arriving just before WarGames.