40 Fun Facts About Crashbox

Maggie Baird, who voices Crashbox's Detective Verity Wisenheimer, is the mother of which pop singer?

Billie Eilish was born in December 2001, more than a year after Crashbox ended; her musician brother Finneas is Baird's son too.

In Crashbox's Wordshake, Chef Pierre blends the letters D and K into which everyday word?

Decay is what you hear when D and K are said aloud. Other rounds mix whole words, so disturb plus honey becomes the Easter Bunny.

How does nearly every Revolting Slob sketch on Crashbox end for its messy title character?

He goes up in smoke, set off by a final word tied to vanishing or destruction, before the polite narrator calmly signs off.

Danny Wells, announcer of Crashbox's Poop or Scoop, played which Nintendo character on 1980s TV?

Luigi was his role in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, a decade before he asked Crashbox viewers to sort true wildlife facts from false ones.

In the Crashbox game Eddie Bull, what must viewers work out from the zookeeper's string of hints?

Which animal ate him is the mystery every time, and once viewers name the creature it spits Eddie back out to end the game.

In Crashbox's Riddlesnake, who rises from a basket when the snake plays its pipe?

A man rises from the basket and sways to the snake's music, reversing the old snake-charmer act, then blows an instrument that reveals the riddle's answer.

Where do Crashbox's junk-built robots work, loading each game for viewers to play at home?

Inside a computer is where the whole show unfolds: the opening shows the machine crashing to Earth before the screen opens to let viewers in.

Which Seinfeld actor was announced in 1998 as the voice of the host of HBO Family's Crashbox?

Jerry Stiller, Seinfeld's short-tempered Frank Costanza, was named as the host's voice when the channel unveiled its line-up of new children's shows.

Which Ferris Bueller's Day Off actress voices the polite narrator of Crashbox's Revolting Slob?

Edie McClurg, the school secretary Grace in the 1986 film, stays unfailingly polite however disgusting the slob's habits get.

The identical twins Paige and Sage star in which classic kind of puzzle on Crashbox?

Spot the difference suits twins: viewers get 60 seconds to find 10 changes between Paige's side of the screen and Sage's.

What must viewers figure out about each set of three things shown in Crashbox's Think Tank?

What they share is the puzzle, and there is a deadline: the host's fish tank is draining the whole time viewers think.

In Crashbox's Captain Bones, what must viewers usually do to fix the skeleton pirate's puzzles?

Move a bone or two is the usual fix: Captain Bones lays out a faulty sum or picture with his own skeleton and mocks viewers with pirate insults while they think.

How is the mystery portrait gradually revealed in the Crashbox museum game Dirty Pictures?

A maid dusts it off while a wooden guard nicknamed Old Fossil holds up cards with hints about the person in the painting.

In Crashbox's Mugshots, what must viewers decide about the four suspects questioned by a detective?

Who is telling the truth is the puzzle: three suspects lie about where they were, and slips in their stories give them away.

Which kind of character hosts Poop or Scoop, the true-or-false creature quiz on Crashbox?

A carnival barker reels off four claims about animals per game, trying to trip viewers up as they call each one true or false.

Which school subject do the multiple-choice questions in Crashbox's Revolting Slob sketches teach?

Vocabulary is the lesson: viewers choose which of three similar-sounding words describes the slob's latest disgusting habit.

What kind of puzzle must viewers crack against the clock in the Crashbox game Ten Seconds?

A rebus spells out a phrase with pictures and letters, and the show's credits join in by writing the game's title as Ten 2nds.

Sketch Pad, the Crashbox artist who draws scenes that seem to make no sense, is what kind of character?

A beatnik in style, Sketch Pad draws a baffling scene and viewers must guess the missing twist that makes the story add up.

In Crashbox's Haunted House Party, ghostly guests drop clues about what kind of mystery guest of honor?

A historical figure is the guest every time, and the unseen host, the Horrid One, recaps the clues before the big reveal.

The Crashbox zookeeper Eddie Bull works at a zoo in which real Washington city?

Walla Walla is a real city in southeastern Washington, home of the sweet onion that became the state's official vegetable.

Which dark-room machine clears up the detective's blurry photos in Crashbox's Lens McCracken?

The Solutionator zooms each photo out, and the stumped detective then stitches the pictures into a nonsensical story about his case.

Unlike most Crashbox characters, how are the four suspects in each Mugshots case portrayed?

By live actors, photographed as real people, the suspects stand apart from the stop-motion models, puppets and cutouts that host most of the show's games.

What do viewers unscramble in the Crashbox game Radio Scramble, hosted by a talking microphone?

A song title is the main anagram, though the DJ also scrambles words in his traffic, sports and weather reports.

Each Crashbox episode ends with a recap of its games, named after which button on a tape player?

Rewind is the button: Crashbox Rewind revisits four or five of the episode's games so viewers can check what they learned.

Which Canadian studio, founded by Adam Shaheen, gave Crashbox its look and many animation styles?

Cuppa Coffee Studios had been a commercials shop, and Crashbox was its first venture into long-form television.

Crashbox aired on an American channel, but in which Canadian city was the series animated?

Toronto is home to the studio behind the animation, whose British-born boss said Crashbox had the sensibility of a British game show.

Before Crashbox, which 1980s HBO series was also built around animated educational skits?

Braingames ran on HBO in the mid-1980s, filling each half-hour with animated brain-teasers some 15 years before Crashbox tried the same idea.

Which Whose Line Is It Anyway? improviser voices the messy title character of Crashbox's Revolting Slob?

Mike McShane, a regular on the original British Whose Line, also played Friar Tuck in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Which skill does Crashbox's Distraction News test by flashing odd images across a newscast?

Memory is what counts: after anchor Dora Smarmy signs off, viewers are quizzed on key facts from the report they just watched.

What must viewers guess in Crashbox's Ear-We-Are, where two ears describe sounds to each other?

A place or event is the goal: the two ears are travelling somewhere, and the noises they describe are the only clues to where.

Which hot-headed robot hosts the Crashbox game Psycho Math, turning countable clues into long sums?

Professor Rocket swaps numbers for clues, so the players on a baseball team stand in for nine. He also fronted the fact-filled shorts Who Knew?.

Which series of Crashbox spin-off shorts had newsreader Dora Smarmy explain unusual words?

Smart Mouth shorts ran in the breaks between programmes on HBO Family, alongside a sister series of strange facts fronted by another Crashbox host.

What dramatic effect comes just before the mystery guest appears in Crashbox's Haunted House Party?

A lightning flash lights the room, and the guest of honour then appears as a cardboard cutout.

Which voice of the Grim Reaper in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy plays Crashbox's artist Sketch Pad?

Greg Eagles voices two Crashbox hosts, the artist and a submarine captain, and later became Aku Aku in the Crash Bandicoot games.

What color are the game cartridges that Crashbox's rusty tin robots make and load between games?

Green cartridges hold the games, and the rusty tin robots that load them sometimes get short sketches of their own as they repair a damaged one.

Why are the case photos blurry close-ups in the Crashbox detective game Lens McCracken?

His camera is broken, so every shot comes out zoomed-in and fuzzy, and viewers must work out what each one really shows.

Who narrates the Crashbox twins game Paige and Sage, teasing the pair while recapping the answers?

A valley girl narrates, poking fun at the twins and pointing out the strange characters lurking in each picture.

Which US television rating did HBO Family give Crashbox when the series launched in 1999?

TV-Y7 marks shows suitable for children aged seven and older, a step up from the TV-Y given to its preschool launch partner A Little Curious.

What are the call letters of the radio station in the Crashbox anagram game Radio Scramble?

KBOX borrows the last three letters of the show's own name, and one 1999 review even listed the game as KBOX Radio Scramble.

In Crashbox's second season, the Revolting Slob sketches moved from his living room to which room?

His kitchen became the set, and his personality changed with it, from grumpy and gluttonous to eccentric and exuberant.