The Cooperisms of "The Big Bang Theory" Quiz

Answer: The end of the couch

In the pilot episode, Penny made the mistake of taking Sheldon's spot at the end of the couch when she was invited into Leonard and Sheldon's apartment for the first time. Sheldon had gotten into the habit of choosing where to sit based on variables such as cushion densities, airflow patterns and the dispersion of sunlight, and he did not appreciate being displaced from his pre-determined seat.

The reason he liked that particular spot is best explained in his own words: "In the winter, that seat is close enough to the radiator to remain warm, and yet not so close as to cause perspiration.

In the summer, it's directly in the path of a cross-breeze created by opening windows there and there. It faces the television at an angle that is neither direct, thus discouraging conversation, nor so far wide as to create a parallax distortion. I could go on but I think I've made my point."

Answer: Astrology

As a scientist, Sheldon probably wouldn't have accorded much respect to any of these practices, but it was astrology that he expressed disdain for in the pilot episode. Penny had informed Leonard and Sheldon that she was a Sagittarius, and remarked that that probably told them way more than they needed to know about her.

Sheldon was in agreement, and responded by saying, "It tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun's apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality." Unsurprisingly, Penny didn't understand what Sheldon was saying.

In a subsequent episode, Sheldon referred to astrology as "pseudo-scientific hokum".

Answer: He arranged his soft toy collection in alphabetical order

Sheldon's obsessive need to organize was well documented in the show's first season. In "The Big Bran Hypothesis", Leonard and Sheldon did Penny a favor by accepting a delivery of some furniture while she was at work. Sheldon nearly had an aneurysm when he entered her apartment, which he described as "a swirling vortex of entropy".

He couldn't sleep that night knowing that Penny's apartment was in a mess, so he snuck in to straighten up. In the same episode, we also discovered that Sheldon sorted his breakfast cereals by fiber content, with "Big Bran" on the high end, and "Honey Puffs" on the low end, of the shelf.

In "The Pancake Batter Anomaly", it was revealed that Sheldon had labeled everything in the apartment, including the label maker. So far however, Sheldon has not been depicted as owning a soft toy collection (an unlikely state of affairs, given that he made fun of Penny's penchant for soft toys in "The Nerdvana Annihilation"), but if he ever did, it's quite possible that he would arrange them in alphabetical order.

Answer: He insulted his new boss

Sheldon didn't blow up his lab, and probably wouldn't dream of falsifying his results. He also never mastered the plebian task of driving, so he wouldn't have stolen anyone's parking spot. Sheldon got fired from Caltech after he insulted his new boss by calling him a "glorified high school science teacher", and implied that he wasn't "an actual real scientist".

His contempt for Dr. Gablehauser was just one example of how Sheldon's arrogance and his belief in his own superiority often got him into trouble with those around him.

Sheldon often belittled the work of his friends, and he referred to engineers as "the Oompa-Loompas of science" in "The Jerusalem Duality". When he found out that his sister had been telling her friends that he was a rocket scientist in "The Porkchop Indeterminacy", he equated that to being a toll-taker at the Golden Gate Bridge.

In "The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization", he even implied that he was smarter than Isaac Newton by proclaiming, "Gravity would have been apparent to me without the apple".

Answer: The flu

In "The Pancake Batter Anomaly", Sheldon was alarmed to hear that everyone in Penny's family had gotten sick with the flu over the weekend, so he threw her out of the apartment after interrogating her about her level of exposure. "You better go before he starts spraying you with Lysol," advised Leonard, explaining to Penny that Sheldon was a "germophobe".

He also tried unsuccessfully to placate Sheldon by telling him that Penny didn't appear symptomatic. "Oh please," said Sheldon. "If influenza was only contagious after symptoms appear it would have died out thousands of years ago. Somewhere between tool-using and cave-painting, Homo habilis would have figured out to kill the guy with the runny nose." Sheldon's paranoia wasn't confined to just diseases - he didn't like anyone touching his food, and in "The Grasshopper Experiment", we learnt that he showered twice a day and washed his hands as often as he could.

Answer: "You're going to march yourself over there right now and apologize."

After Sheldon snuck into Penny's apartment to clean, he felt so good about himself that he slept splendidly. "I'm not surprised," said Leonard sarcastically. "A well-known folk cure for insomnia is to break into your neighbor's apartment and clean." When Sheldon opined that his actions probably improved Penny's quality of life, Leonard's retort was, "You've convinced me. Maybe tonight we should sneak in and shampoo her carpet." Believing him to be serious, Sheldon asked if that would be crossing a line, which prompted a frustrated Leonard to say, "Do I have to hold up a sarcasm sign every time I open my mouth?" Later, when he was confronted by Penny about being in her apartment while she was asleep, Sheldon suggested that she should consult an otolaryngologist for her snoring, and clarified that he was referring to a throat doctor when she gave him a blank look. Penny responded with, "And what kind of doctor removes shoes from asses?" Again, Sheldon treated her query a little too literally when he replied, "Depending on the depth, that's either a proctologist or a general surgeon", which prompted Leonard to hold up a sarcasm sign he had just made.

After Penny stormed off, Leonard said to Sheldon, "You're going to march yourself over there right now and apologize", which provoked laughter from Sheldon, who thought that Leonard was being sarcastic. When Leonard disabused him of that notion, a confused Sheldon remarked, "Boy, you are all over the place this morning!"

Answer: Penny

When Leslie Winkle seduced Leonard one night after a string quartet rehearsal at his apartment, there wasn't a lot of time to give Sheldon the heads-up about Leslie spending the night. Leonard therefore improvised by employing the universal "do not disturb" signal on the doorknob of his bedroom, not realizing that its meaning would be lost on Sheldon because he was eleven when he went to college.

Sheldon went across the hall to seek counsel from Penny, who explained the meaning of the tie on the doorknob to him, but this only gave rise to another problem for Sheldon. "I don't know what the protocol is here," implored Sheldon. "Do I stay? Do I leave? Do I wait to greet them with a refreshing beverage?" Penny wasn't much help. "Gee, Sheldon," she said. "You're asking the wrong girl. I'm usually on the other side of the tie." Sheldon settled for calling Leonard on his cell phone to inform him that he had received his message loud and clear.

Answer: Doctor Who

Being a creature of habit, Sheldon's distress was understandable. "Every Saturday since we've lived in this apartment, I have awakened at six-fifteen, poured myself a bowl of cereal, added a quarter cup of two percent milk, sat on this end of this couch, turned on BBC America, and watched Doctor Who," complained Sheldon when he found Penny asleep on the couch.

When Leonard pointed out that he had a television set in his room, and asked him why he didn't just have breakfast in bed, Sheldon replied, "Because I am neither an invalid, nor a woman celebrating Mother's Day." He never liked departing from his regular routines, which included playing Halo every Wednesday night, paintball every weekend, and eating a cheeseburger every Tuesday.

When he considered including The Cheesecake Factory in his weekly line-up of dinner venues, he asked Penny, "Who do I speak to about permanently reserving this table?" to which she replied, "I don't know, a psychiatrist?"

Answer: A birthday present

In "The Peanut Reaction", Penny noticed that Sheldon hadn't gotten Leonard a birthday present, and demanded to know why. "The entire institution of gift-giving makes no sense," explained Sheldon. "Let's say that I go out and I spend 50 dollars on you.

It's a laborious activity because I have to imagine what you need whereas you know what you need. Now I could simplify things - just give you the 50 dollars directly, and you could give me 50 dollars on my birthday, and so on until one of us dies, leaving the other one old and 50 dollars richer. And I ask you, is it worth it?" Sheldon was only convinced to buy a birthday present for Leonard when, at Howard's prompting, Penny told him that it was "a non-optional social convention". "Oh," said Sheldon. "Fair enough."

Answer: Tangerine chicken

To say that Sheldon was a fussy eater would be an understatement, and woe betide anyone who got his food order wrong. He once complained that his sandwich was "an unmitigated disaster", because he was given the right ingredients in the wrong order. "In a proper sandwich," he explained, "the cheese is adjacent to the bread, to create a moisture barrier against the lettuce.

They might as well have dragged this thing through a car wash." In "The Tangerine Factor", Sheldon believed that the Szechuan Palace was passing off orange chicken as tangerine chicken, although Leonard thought that he should have been more concerned about what they were passing off as chicken. Ever the perfectionist, Sheldon insisted on learning Mandarin so that he could confront the owner of the restaurant in his native tongue.

Unfortunately, Sheldon's linguistic skills left a little to be desired. Amongst the things he mistranslated and said in Mandarin in this episode were "Long live concrete", "Your monkey sleeps inside of me", "Show me your mucus" and "Oxen are in my bed.

Many, many oxen."