"The Big Bang Theory": Cooperisms from Season 2 Quiz

Answer: "Did you forget to put the seat down?"

Penny made the mistake of telling Sheldon that she had lied to Leonard about finishing community college because she didn't want him to think that she was a stupid loser. ("You thought the opposite of 'stupid loser' was 'community college graduate'?") Penny asked Sheldon not to tell Leonard the truth, but Sheldon proved to be rather inept at trying to keep her secret.

He became awkward around Penny, and displayed a nervous tic whenever he spoke to Leonard about her. When Penny refused to release him from his "covenant of secret keeping", Sheldon felt that he had no other option but to move out. Raj and Howard were simply guessing at the more likely reasons that Sheldon might have for not wanting to live with Leonard any longer, but they never mentioned anything about toilet seats.

They did, however, think that Sheldon would move out if Leonard adjusted the thermostat, cooked with cilantro, pronounced the "t" in "often", or if he committed the cardinal sin of making fun of trains.

Answer: None of these were his answers.

In "The Euclid Alternative", Leonard's schedule at the University made it impossible for him to drive Sheldon to and from work every day, and Sheldon drove everyone else crazy when he made them take him wherever he wanted to go, so they held an intervention and made an appointment for him at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Naturally, Sheldon had some concerns about the test that he was required to take at the DMV. In the case of the question, "When are roadways most slippery?", Sheldon was quick to point out that a proper answer wasn't listed among the multiple choices on the test. "There are three answers, none of which are correct," Sheldon patiently explained to the frustrated DMV employee. "The correct answer is, 'When covered by a film of liquid sufficient to reduce the coefficient of static friction between the tire and the road to essentially zero, but not so deep as to introduce a new source of friction.'" The clerk at the DMV gave Sheldon his Learner's Permit, and told him to go away.

Answer: The Cohabitation Rider

Leonard wasn't the first person that Sheldon approached for help; he went to the person with the most experience with his particular problem - Penny. "Apparently, I'm in some kind of relationship," Sheldon explained to Penny, "and you seem to be an expert in ending them." When that didn't work out, he roused Leonard from his sleep in an unsuccessful attempt to solicit his assistance. "I'm invoking the Skynet Clause of our friendship agreement," whispered a desperate Sheldon. "That only applies if you need me to help you destroy an artificial intelligence you created that's taking over the Earth," Leonard replied. Sheldon then tried to invoke the Body-Snatchers Clause, but was reminded by Leonard that it only applied if he needed help to destroy someone they knew who had been replaced with an alien pod. Likewise, the Godzilla Clause only applied if Ramona destroyed Tokyo. In the end, Sheldon ended things with Ramona on his own after she tried to share credit for one of his breakthroughs.

Sheldon successfully invoked the Cohabitation Rider of his roommate agreement after Leonard's then girlfriend, Dr. Stephanie Barnett, started living with them in "The Vartabedian Conundrum". Amongst other things, the Rider provided for modifications to the bathroom schedule, refrigerator shelving arrangements and vacuuming frequency to accommodate an additional person living in the apartment.

Answer: She called Sheldon "moonpie".

In "The Panty Pinata Polarization", we learnt that Sheldon had a practice of giving out "strikes" to people in his inner circle if they did something that really annoyed him. If you got three strikes, you were banished. The strikes stayed on your record for a year, but you could have them removed early by taking a class, which was available online. Penny got her first strike on March 18, when she forwarded Sheldon an email of a "lolcat". ("I trusted you with my email address and you betrayed that trust by sending me internet banality - strike one.") Her second strike occurred when she picked up an onion ring belonging to Sheldon, and exacerbated the situation by putting it back, thereby "compromising the integrity of all the other onion rings". Penny protested her second strike by refusing to move from Sheldon's spot on the couch, which earned her a third strike. She was banished briefly, but she managed to get all her strikes expunged from her record by invoking Sheldon's "kryptonite" (she called his mother and got her to intervene).

Although Penny did call Sheldon "moonpie" in "The Terminator Decoupling" after she discovered that it was the nickname given to him by his grandmother, she didn't get a strike from him for doing that. It did, however, cause little bubbles to form in the corner of his mouth.

Answer: She told him that he had an inflamed larynx, so that he would stop talking.

At the start of "The Vartabedian Conundrum", Stephanie was examining Sheldon's ear for signs of inflammation. "You're the doctor," Sheldon complained, "but I'm constantly hearing this annoying sound." Leonard confessed that he was hearing it too, but that it was more of "a relentless, narcissistic drone".

When Stephanie gave Sheldon's ear a clean bill of health, he declared that he must have a tumor. Later, he showed up at Stephanie's hospital and insisted on getting a battery of tests, including a cardiac stress test, a full-body MRI, and an examination of his upper gastrointestinal tract ("I already drank the barium"). To get him to leave her alone, Stephanie told him that his larynx was terribly inflamed, and advised him to stop talking immediately.

She called it a "Sheldonectomy". It did the trick, and Sheldon spent the rest of the episode using his laptop to communicate with people.

Answer: He gave her all six gift baskets.

In "The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis", Sheldon was dismayed to learn that Penny had bought him a Christmas present. "The foundation of gift-giving is reciprocity," Sheldon explained to Penny. "You haven't given me a gift. You've given me an obligation." When Penny said that he didn't have to get her anything in return, Sheldon quickly disabused her of the notion. "Of course I do. The essence of the custom is that I now have to go out and purchase for you a gift of commensurate value, and representing the same perceived level of friendship as that represented by the gift you've given me." Afraid that he might under or over-reciprocate, Sheldon devised a fool-proof plan when he purchased six different gift baskets of varying sizes, and planned to excuse himself by feigning digestive distress after opening Penny's present so that he could look up the price of her gift and select the basket that was closest in value.

Sheldon's plan fell apart when Penny gave him a napkin autographed by Leonard Nimoy, and apologized for it being dirty because he had used it to wipe his mouth. "I possess the DNA of Leonard Nimoy?" Sheldon asked. "Do you realize what this means? All I need is a healthy ovum and I can grow my own Leonard Nimoy!" Sheldon was so overwhelmed that he gave all six gift baskets to a surprised Penny. "I know, it's not enough is it?" he declared, before proceeding to give her a hug.

Answer: Fear of heights

In "The Friendship Algorithm", Sheldon was having trouble bonding with Barry, so he administered a questionnaire (comprising 211 questions, including an essay) to his current group of friends to discover what they liked about him. When that failed to produce the desired results, he visited the bookstore to acquire a book that summarized the current theories in the field of friend-making.

His selection, "Stu the Cockatoo is New at the Zoo", taught him to find a common activity to partake with Barry, which was how Sheldon found himself attempting rock-climbing.

Initially, he dismissed any notion that he was acrophobic. "A fear of heights is illogical," he observed. "Fear of falling, on the other hand, is prudent and evolutionary." Sheldon was about halfway up the length of the rockface when he made the mistake of looking down, and came to the realization that he was indeed afraid of heights.

He didn't think that he could make it to the top or climb back down, so he opted for passing out.

Answer: A CAT scanner

In the first season of the show, we learnt that when Sheldon was twelve, he built a small nuclear reactor and offered to supply his town with free electricity. He also built a sonic death ray to use on the neighbor kids, but it had no effect on them and only upset the dog. During the second season of the show, we learnt in "The White Asparagus Triangulation" that Sheldon also built his own CAT scanner, and was briefly able to see the inside of his sister's guinea pig, Snowball, before it caught fire. As Sheldon explained, "It led to an interesting expression in our house - 'Not a Snowball's chance in a CAT scanner!'"

When Leonard's mother came to visit in "The Maternal Capacitance", we learnt that Leonard was the one who built a hugging machine when he was ten years old. He stuffed a dressmaker's mannequin with an electric blanket and built two radio-controlled arms that would hug him and pat his back, evidently to make up for the lack of affection coming from his mother. "You know what the saddest part was?" Leonard recalled. "My father used to borrow it."

Answer: Indian cuisine

Sheldon said that he would "rather have a blowfly lay eggs and hatch larvae in [his] auditory canal" than go to Las Vegas for the weekend, so the rest of the guys went without him. That suited Sheldon just fine, and for dinner he bought himself some Kadhai Paneer, which he described to Penny as "a perfect culinary representation of the freedom this evening holds". "Not only is it Indian cuisine, which Koothrappali loathes," explained Sheldon, "it contains a generous helping of peanuts, which would reduce Wolowitz to a wheezing, 97-pound blister. And finally, its main ingredient is paneer, a farmer's cheese that would cause Leonard to render any room uninhabitable within minutes." Unfortunately, Sheldon locked himself out of the apartment, so he had to enjoy his paneer, and spend the night, at Penny's place.

Answer: Bazinga!

In "The Monopolar Expedition", the guys were getting ready for a three-month expedition to the North Pole, which placed Sheldon in such a good mood that he kept playing pranks on Leonard. He led Leonard to believe that an equation on his board was wrong, when it wasn't. "I can't comment without violating our agreement that I not criticize your work," Sheldon said, and waited for Leonard to make a correction before telling him that he had gotten it right in the first place. "Once again, you have fallen for one of my classic pranks. Bazinga!" Later, he displayed a rare affinity for sarcasm when he told Leonard, "It appears that Penny secretly wants you in her life in a very intimate and carnal fashion." Leonard fell for it at first, until he realized that he was being "Bazinga-ed" again. Finally, Sheldon hid a pack of flash-frozen brown rice and led Leonard to believe that he had forgotten to bring it on the expedition, before pulling a "Bazinga" hat-trick on Leonard. Something tells me that the trip to the North Pole is going to feel a lot longer than three months.