In tonight's episode of The Amazing Race (a US reality show where
contestants race around the world solving clues, treasure-hunt
style), one of the puzzles for the contestants while they were in
Belgium involved the comic strip Tintin. While the host (Phil)
explained a little bit about that strip to the TV audience, the
images going across the screen included the infobox from the
Wikipedia page on Tintin. The puzzle required the contestants to put
on costumes and makeup as instructed, and then figure out what
characters they were intended to resemble (Thomson and Thompson). At
least one of the teams was shown using Wikipedia (at an Internet
cafe) as one of their reference sources to find the correct answer
(after they had mis-identified themselves as Charlie Chaplin and
Buster Keaton). The judge (dressed as Tintin) accepted any of
several names, since the characters in question have different names
in different language editions (as itemized on Wikipedia).
So, add this million-dollar-prize televised race to the things that
people end up relying on Wikipedia for... let's hope the relevant
articles aren't vandalized at the time!
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