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 directed WarGames after its original director was fired early in shooting?
John Badham
John Badham, who had directed Saturday Night Fever, took over; he loosened up the two stiff young leads by having them race him around the sound stage.
Q 03Which director was fired from WarGames a few weeks into shooting?
Martin Brest
Martin Brest was dismissed by the producers early in shooting; he went on to direct Beverly Hills Cop in 1984 and Midnight Run in 1988.
Q 04Who portrays Jennifer Mack, David's classmate, in WarGames?
Ally Sheedy
Ally Sheedy plays Jennifer Mack; WarGames opened in 1983, two years before The Breakfast Club made her a full member of the Brat Pack.
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 actor portrays reclusive scientist Stephen Falken and also voices WOPR?
John Wood
John Wood, an English stage actor who won a Tony for Travesties, plays Falken; his electronically treated voice also supplies the computer's lines.
Q 07Which former Beatle wanted the role of Falken while the WarGames script was in development?
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 08Barry Corbin's General Beringer was based on which real USAF general the writers met at the base?
James V. Hartinger
Hartinger was then commander-in-chief of the real NORAD.
Q 09What does the acronym WOPR stand for in WarGames?
War Operation Plan Response
The director coined it to sound like the Whopper hamburger, thinking NORAD's real Single Integrated Operational Plan sounded boring.
Q 10An early draft's version of the computer was a space-based defensive laser nicknamed what?
Uncle Ollie
OLI stood for Omnipresent Laser Interceptor; the idea was dropped as too speculative.
Q 11The writers' first 1979 script, before hacking entered the story, was called what?
The Genius
The Genius was about a dying scientist and the rebellious kid who alone understands him, an idea sparked by a television documentary about a physicist.
Q 12What machine does David use to change his grades and dial into WOPR?
IMSAI 8080
David's computer is an IMSAI 8080, a 1970s S-100 bus microcomputer with front-panel toggle switches, which he connects to the phone line through an acoustic-coupler modem.
Q 13In which California town is David dialling every phone number when he stumbles onto WOPR?
Sunnyvale
David scans every number in Sunnyvale hunting for Protovision, a games company, and instead reaches an unidentified 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 23WarGames grossed about $125M worldwide against a budget of roughly how much?
$12M
The budget was about $12M; WarGames earned $79.6 million domestically, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 1983 in the U.S. and Canada.
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 slip out of NORAD after being detained?
By joining a tourist group
By joining a tourist group leaving the complex, David walks out of NORAD after slipping away from the infirmary where he was being held as a suspected spy.
Q 19Which three American bases report back unharmed, proving the Soviet strike is fake?
Elmendorf, Grand Forks and Loring
NORAD had been persuaded to ride out the supposed strike until real impacts were confirmed.
Q 20Why can't NORAD simply unplug WOPR when it starts trying to launch on its own?
A fail-deadly system would fire all the missiles
A fail-deadly system would fire all the missiles, NORAD's staff warn: the computer would read a shutdown as the destruction of NORAD and launch, the silo crews having already been replaced.
Q 24Which of these was one of WarGames' three Oscar nominations?
Best Original Screenplay
WarGames was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Sound at the 1984 Oscars; it won the BAFTA for Best Sound.
Q 25Which critic gave WarGames four out of four stars and called it "an amazingly entertaining thriller"?
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert reviewed WarGames for the Chicago Sun-Times, awarding four stars out of four and calling it "an amazingly entertaining thriller".
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 27The film helped prompt NSDD-145 (1984), the first presidential directive on what?
Computer security
Computer security was the subject of NSDD-145, signed in September 1984 as the National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security; Congress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1986.
Q 28Which term for scanning phone numbers with a modem did WarGames inspire?
Wardialing
Wardialing, automatically dialling blocks of numbers to find modems, took its name from the film's scanning scene, replacing the older term demon dialing; wardriving for Wi-Fi followed.
Q 29Which Milwaukee teenage hacker group broke into Los Alamos computers in the summer of 1983?
The 414s
The 414s, Milwaukee teenagers named for their area code, broke into systems including Los Alamos National Laboratory and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 1983, drawing FBI attention.
Q 30The 2008 direct-to-DVD sequel WarGames: The Dead Code pits a hacker against a supercomputer called what?
RIPLEY
The sequel's computer is RIPLEY, a government system that flags the hacker played by Matt Lanter as a terrorist; the original film returned to cinemas for a single 25th-anniversary night.