Silicon Valley Squares
Presented by: Dan Hollinger
Originally aired on April 24 @ 9:30 PM - 10:00 PM EDT
A send up of Hollywood Squares where Cloudflare experts fill the celebrity squares and answer high and low-level Cloudflare questions to help two guest stars (customers, AEs or new hires) get a a tic-tac-toe, or possibly the Silicon Valley equivalent - a TCP handshake (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK). This week we have a takeover from Viking Pod!
English
Game Show
Transcript (Beta)
Hello, hello. Welcome everyone to yet another episode of Silicon Valley Squares. With me today is the Viking pod, made up of our marketing, communications and community teams.
If you've never been on the show or seen the show before, welcome. I'm your host from the West Coast, Dan Hollinger.
With me today, we're going to have the Viking pod answer some amazing trivia questions about communication language.
I think at least one Viking question. Danielle, did you stick a Viking question in there?
Of course I did. Awesome. So with that, if you've never joined us on the show before, it is quite simply tic-tac-toe.
I have two contestants here, Johnny and Rachel, each vying for victory amongst the Viking pod.
They'll be trying to do that by us asking trivia questions of my squares.
They'll be trying to get three across, three diagonally, or three down.
So with that, Johnny, would you mind giving a quick intro?
Yeah, thanks, Dan. I'm Johnny. I've been a Viking member for the last year on the communications team, and looking forward to winning my first game of Silicon Valley Squares.
Wow. The stakes have been set. And Rachel, how about yourself?
My name is Rachel. I've been on the Viking pod for five years plus.
Honorary member. I support a man, I don't know if you guys know him, his name's Matthew Prince.
So I support him. That's the name on my chat. Viking.
Yes, got my Viking hat already.
And yeah, I'm ready for Johnny to go down. So yeah, the gauntlet has been laid.
And with that, I will bring up the board. Johnny, you got first play on game one.
Where would you like to start us off? I will start with Leanne.
All right, let's do it. All right. And welcome to the squares.
Would you mind giving a quick intro? Where are you dialing in from? Sure.
So I'm Leanne LaCosta, dialing in from San Francisco, Oakland to be specific.
And I've been on the Viking pod for just about a year plus. Awesome. Glad to have you here.
And I'm sure that I'm glad to have you on the Viking pod. Your question to kick off game one.
A language that is not the native language of any community is known as this.
Oh, okay. Languages that are not native. I'm going to be honest, the first thing that I think of is a programming language, which is definitely not native to me.
But guessing that's not the direction of the question. I guess it'd be something like Latin, which I believe is called a dead language.
So I'm going to go with that.
All right, dead language. Johnny, do you agree or disagree?
It's a tough one. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have thought Leanne would lie to me.
You trust me, Johnny? Yeah, you want to trust your boss. It's not lying. It's marketing.
Not communication right now. I'm I trust Leanne. I agree. All right. Correct.
It is a called a dead language. So it still might be speakers, but there are no native speakers, just like Latin.
So with that, we'll bring up the board. We got our first X.
Rachel, it's your turn. Where would you like to play next? I'm going to go with Daniela, Center Square.
Daniela, Center Square. Welcome. Fearless leader.
Would you mind giving a quick introduction and maybe answering the question on everyone's mind, you know, why are you guys the Viking pod?
Oh, that's a wonderful question.
Well, a Viking pod started when I got this lovely swag from a conference and the security team brought it back for me and brought a few others.
And I used to put it on when it was just little old me on the on the comms team when I didn't want to be disturbed.
So it's kind of the thinking hat. And then whenever we'd have the Viking hats on, it was kind of like, leave, leave that crew alone.
They're busy. So that's, that's how it all started. But yeah, and now it's a it's a much bigger team.
But that was seven years ago. So seven years ago, the Viking pod was established.
Awesome. That's a great piece of Cloudflare history and you know trivia in its own right.
When I have that, you know, the Cloudflare What master show that'll be one of the trivia questions.
I love it. Your question for game one.
What was the original language of the Vikings? Well, of course, I know the answer to this.
I'm not gonna I'm not even going to delay that I we all had to be fluent.
Obviously, every person here had to be fluent to to take this role and to to work at Cloudflare so obviously we all know it.
So I would say it's Old Norse, of course.
All right, Rachel, do you agree with Old Norse? Yeah, I never doubt anything Daniela says so.
That's not good advice going forward.
Potentially savage game of trust. Yeah, it might end some friendship.
If no one lies to each other, you know, I've had some very honest games.
I've had some very dishonest squares. It's all in good fun. Would you like a fun fact on Old Norse?
I'm going to give this to you guys because this is really, really helpful that the several popular words that we use today came from Old Norse, which is a Viking language.
And those words are snort, lump, scrawny, and anger.
They all have words. They all originate from Old Norse. So now you all know.
You not only do we entertain, but we educate as well on the show.
That's, that's what we're aiming for. All right. With that, Rachel, agree was the correct choice.
It was Old Norse. So you, we have a very competitive game thus far.
Johnny, where are we playing next? Oh, I am going to go with Brittany. All right, Brittany.
Welcome to the squares. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Would you mind giving a quick intro? Yeah. I'm on the communications team at Cloudflare on the public relations side.
Joined the dark side about a little over three years ago and haven't left.
Awesome. Glad to have you here today.
Your question. A person who can speak multiple languages is known by this term.
Oh, boy. Well, a term that is better than a majority of Americans, unfortunately, whatever that means.
But I'm going to say poly is part of it. Polyglot?
Polyglot.
All right. Johnny, do you agree or disagree with the term polyglot? It sounds very convincing.
You know, it's got all the right bits to it. So, yeah, I'm going to I'm going to agree.
All right. Polyglot is the term. I mean, if you were making it up, yeah, it was very solid, very solid rendition.
So with that, Rachel, where are we playing next?
I think I have to go with my girl, Ashley, because I got to do the block, right?
Yeah. I mean, you don't have to. We've we've seen like 40 40 tic-tac-toe on this on this show.
So what but good, good, solid strategic choice.
So, Ashley, welcome to the squares. Thank you. Thank you. I'm calling in from San Francisco, Burlingame to be exact.
I've been on the Viking pod for, I guess, a little over five and a half years, six years coming up.
Well, and yeah, I'm on the marketing side, not on the communication side.
I'm on the marketing side of the Viking pod.
Awesome. Glad to have you here. Yeah. Your question, due to the increase of mass production, the first of these were trademarked in 1876 for Bass Brewery.
What was trademarked? What was true? No. I would say the the beer recipe.
The trademark. That does not sound like a confident answer, Dan.
Don't don't look at me. I mean, I was assuming you made the questions.
I think it's a good answer. The confidence is making me a little shaky. I'm going to go with no, because I'm hoping that you're not going to say no.
That she doesn't know that.
All right. So disagree is correct. What was trademarked was the first logo.
So Bass Brewery actually has one of the oldest logos. It was still a red triangle with the text underneath in sweeping cursive.
So confidence was not brewing.
No, no, I don't. Definitely wasn't. Glad you picked up on that.
All right. Here's the state of the board. Johnny, where are we playing next?
It's got to be Dawn. It's got to be Dawn. Dawn, welcome to the squares. Thank you.
So I'm Dawn and I'm calling in from San Francisco, Danville, to be exact, and I've been part of the Viking pod for four years and as part of the analyst relations program.
So up and to the right is what my team is all about. Awesome. Very, very orthogonal.
You know, definitely that's a good skill set to have here on the squares.
Your question, the earliest known form of this communication style was found from over 40,000 years ago.
What communication style? I need to put my hat on to think about this one.
Up and to the right hat.
Uh, I'm going to go with, I mean, it's not like Twitter or tweeting or anything like that, right?
I mean, that's kind of new, right? That's not 40,000 years ago.
So I'm going to go with jargon. Jargon. Jargon was invented over 40,000 years ago.
Do you agree or disagree? I'm going to disagree with that. I can't see the cave people doing jargon.
I'm sure they had like, you know, the cave equivalent of like Synergy and, you know, circling the wagons and, you know, it might have been there.
But disagree is correct. I was looking for cave paintings. Yes.
John, were those color coded cave paintings? Yes, they were. They were. Yes. All right.
And with that, here's the state of the board. Rachel, where are we playing next?
Got to go, Joe. Got to go with Joe. Joe, welcome to the squares. Awesome, thanks for having me.
Would you mind giving a quick intro? Yeah, I'm I'm one of the newer members on the team, been with Cloudflare for a couple of months, dialing in from the great state of Texas, and I work with Don on the analyst relations team.
Awesome. Glad to have you here and hope Texas is doing good and it's not too hot.
Your question, which continent has the most languages? It's a good question. You know, there's a lot of scientists in Antarctica, but I don't think it's probably there.
North America, South America, probably not. I'm going to guess it's between probably not Australia either, though there's a lot of accents that you'd have to account for.
But I'm going to guess between Asia and Africa, and I'm going to go with Africa.
All right.
Africa's the guess. We agree or disagree. That's tough. I you kind of narrowed it down to two choices for me, so I liked that.
Thank you, Joe. I think I'm going to disagree.
All right. Disagree is correct. We were looking for Asia. There are more languages out of the Asian Asian continent.
So with that, I'll bring up the board and Johnny, we're off back to you.
Oh, Luann. All right. Welcome to the squares.
Hi, my name is Luann. I'm part of the communications team after PR for Asia -Pacific, and I am calling in from Singapore.
It's seven forty three a.m. Nice.
Thank you for dialing in so early. It's always nice to have a global show. All right.
So your question, hopefully, you know, it's just you've had your coffee.
You know, you can you can think through it. Yours is multiple choice. So 90 percent of all information to the human brain is transmitted either a visually to auditorily three olfactorily or four via telepathy.
Hmm.
I'd say, according to Darth Vader, it's telepathy. I might be wrong.
I don't know, Ryan. Am I am I wrong? Actually, I don't know, but just the Darth Vader is actually surprising.
We got the ask a square.
Well, I'm going to go with disagree on telepathy.
All right. Good, good choice. Telepathy was was not the correct answer.
I was looking for visual visual information accounts for about 90 percent of all information transmitted to our brains.
So with that, Johnny gets the square and the block. And we're going or not the block.
I guess we're going for a race now. So with that, let me bring the board back up.
I tried to have the interns, you know, give me some sound effects, but they were all leaving, so that didn't help.
You know, wow. All right, Rachel, the board is yours.
Where would you like to play next? Yes, I got to go for the win with Tim.
All right. Going for the win with him. I'm sure you hear that a lot.
All right, Tim, welcome to the squares, you might give it a quick intro. All right, Dan, thank you.
So I'm Tim. I'm with the community team. I've been with the club for three years, a Viking for just a few months, though.
I mean, I'm sure you were always a Viking at heart, right?
That's what led you to the team. Well, it's my fluency in Old Norse, I'm certain.
Tim also has the best Viking presenter voice, I think, of all of us.
It's made for Cloudflare TV. Dan, if you can race them, Tim's your guy.
I am. I am happy to franchise, you know, if anyone wants to play host.
All you got to do is rock the suit and, you know, pretend like you know it all.
Like those are the main two things you're aiming for. Excellent. Excellent.
If you go on a summer holiday, can I get the trailer, too? I when I get it, you know, I'm happy to forward it along.
Tim, your question. This Italian children's story is one of the most translated books in the world with over 300 translations.
Which Italian children's story? Oh. Oh, I saw this, I saw this on NPR.
It is actually one that you're not going to recognize is Don Quixote was actually originally conceived as the first act of Don Giovanni.
And then Cervantes immigrated to Spain and it was originally translated into Spanish.
So Don Quixote. Don Quixote is the guest.
But then Quixote met a La Mancha, I guess. All right, Rachel, do you agree or disagree?
I thought that was a beautiful story, but I'm going to have to disagree.
Disagreeing with the beautiful story that good choice.
The answer I was looking for was Pinocchio.
So someone was lying, obviously. Yeah, but someone did their research on the lie, too.
I'm really impressed. I assumed he was just throwing in enough Spanish sounding words that like you just vanished into an Italian story.
All right. And we are under the bus to Tim. All right.
And with that, Rachel takes game one with three down the middle. Game one is brought to you by boom.
Brought to you by Magic Transit. You can easily get rid of your network perimeter hardware by moving to the cloud and Cloudflare's global Anycast network.
Cloudflare or Magic Transit, when you don't want no scrub being centers.
All right. With that, we're on to game two. Rachel, you're kicking us off.
Where would you like to play first? Let's give Ryan a chance to talk.
Are you sure that's a good idea? I think so. OK. Ryan, welcome to the squares.
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Would you mind giving a quick intro for all of your fans on Cloudflare TV?
I don't mind at all. My name is Ryan. I work in community and social on the comps team.
I have only been officially within the Viking pod for a few months, though I've been told that I've been an honorary member for almost the entire five years that I've been at Cloudflare.
And I am coming in to you from San Diego, San Jose, which is south of San Francisco.
Technically, what nobody refers to as Willow Glen, nobody ever calls it Dub G, but I'm in the Dub G.
I can make that symbol. Nice area. And yeah, happy to be here.
Awesome. Well, glad to have you. Your question to kick off game two. In May 1844, this man dispatched the first telegraphic message telegram over a line from D.C.
to Baltimore. Which man in 1844? Well, I I think that I know this, but I need to make sure I'm narrowing down in my head.
I, I believe that the original answer, the original one was actually Thomas Edison.
But he was working on this before the phone.
It's how it worked. All right. Thomas Edison. Rachel, do you agree or disagree?
Don't know. It's a lot of pressure. Well done, Ryan. I like it tells me that it doesn't sound right, but I don't want to start Johnny off with it.
I mean, I trust Ryan.
I don't know. It just doesn't sound right. I trust Post Malone.
He would never lie. I'm going to go with no, but I think I'm going to regret it.
All right. So disagree is correct.
We were looking for Morse, Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegram, which rhymes with Old Norse.
Just does rhyme with Old Norse. RBG commends you.
All right, Johnny, back to you for first play of game two, where we going?
Oh, I'm going to go with Daniela. All right, Daniela, center square. Your question.
This form of punctuation or character stems from a Greek word, which means to cut.
Which form of punctuation? Oh, cut it out. This doesn't even require the shift key.
It is a flash. I think I think Dave Cugat would be proud. That that was magical.
I'm I'm going to go with disagree. All right. Disagree. That is correct.
I was looking for the comma. The word comma is from the Greek word comma or coma.
I if anyone speaks Greek, you're welcome to correct me, which means to cut.
So Johnny takes center square and I'll bring I'm just processing that Daniela lied to me, which is I was crossing my fingers while I did it.
Relationships are broken here on the squares.
All right, Rachel, the board is yours.
Where are we playing next? OK, let's see. Let's see. Where shall I go? Let's go with Dawn.
All right, Dawn, your question for game two. What term refers to the special expression or words used by a group that are difficult for others to understand?
I'm going to go with pig Latin.
Pig Latin. Oh, no, a pig Latin would be different.
I go, no. All right. Rachel disagrees. That is correct.
I was looking for jargon this time. I'm like, that's like a real language you're finding.
No, gibberish is a real thing. If you said gibberish, I would have said yes.
I mean, I would I would put jargon and gibberish in the same category.
But isn't that what the the cave people were doing with their jargon? Forty thousand years ago?
Yeah, that's the circle. The mastodons on it. I'm sure there was, you know, synergy somewhere.
Yeah, I've forgotten a lot of my MBA, so that's where most of the jargon went.
So all right, let's bring up the board. Johnny, you're where we play next.
Oh, it's got to be Luann. That'll be Luann for the block.
All right, Luann, pressure's on. So this communication method is visible from as far away as 50 miles, especially on the open plains.
Which communication method?
I'm going to say.
A smoke signal. All right, a smoke signal, Johnny, do you agree or disagree?
It sounds right. I think I think I'm going to agree with Luann.
All right. It is a smoke signal. So, yeah, I was impressed when I looked it up, like 50 miles seems like a pretty good view, like you can communicate a lot.
All right, here's the state of the board.
Rachel, where are we playing next? Well, we will go with Brittany.
All right, Brittany for the win. Brittany, your question.
Egyptians used these symbols for writing on stone tablets or papyrus. Which symbols?
Oh, I think I know the answer to this. Oh, well, what do we do here? Well, I get to answer first.
Well, fun fact, they were ones and dots, and this is something that I actually picked up on back in when we launched 1.1 .1.1.
And the story behind it is they just wanted it to be so secure, so private and so fast when they wrote.
That's where we picked up on our resolver.
To be fair, it was not copyrighted. It was not. Never, ever.
We work hand in hand with the legal team all the time. Is that the end of the answer?
Yeah, ones and dots. Those are the symbols. Ones and dots.
Simple as that. I mean, I do appreciate the plug. Like, kudos to working that in there.
Brittany's too sweet to lie. So she's really bad at it. So I'm going to go with no.
Oh, I knew I was in trouble when you picked me. All right, that is a disagree is a good choice.
We were looking for hieroglyphs. So Egyptian hieroglyphs.
And so with that, I'll share the screen. Rachel takes or oops.
I'm going to fire you. Fire me. All right. I'm I'm just stalling for time. Talk amongst yourselves, Squares.
This is what happens when the interns leave. It does.
I'm just falling apart. All right. So we got the block. Game two continues. You guys heard and saw nothing.
So with that, Johnny, where are we playing next? Well, first down, I want the 50 bucks back that I slipped to before this game.
Not 50 bucks.
I. It's not my Venmo. I'm going to go. I'm going to go with Joe. All right.
Going to Joe. Your question for game two. In 1895, the first communication of this kind was sent by Guillermo Marconi.
Well, I would have guessed telegraph, but as Ryan already explained, to us, it's was it Thomas Edison and the telegraph and in the early 1800s.
So I'm going to guess. Radio.
All right, radio, do you agree or disagree?
I have absolutely no idea, but it sounds so convincing that I'm going to go with yes, I agree.
All right. Radio is correct.
Oh, Joe, Joe, I got money like wired just now. All right.
So with that, we have time for for one more question. Rachel, where are we?
Where are we heading next? Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. I'm going to have to go with the block, so I'll go with Tim.
All right, Tim, your question to close us out for the episode.
Which of the following languages is not a Germanic language?
One French, two Dutch or three Swedish. None of those are German.
Germanic. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, it's a harder question than I thought.
It's not the right answer. It's like this question is easy. I'm going with Swedish.
All right. Swedish is not a Germanic language. Do you agree or disagree?
I'm going to disagree.
All right. Disagree is correct. I was looking for French. French is a romance language.
It stems from Latin. All right. So with that, we'll be here's the state of the board.
We'll be closing out the episode. I want to thank the Viking Pod for for joining us on Silicon Valley Squares.
I want to thank all the viewers, whether you're catching the show or not.
If you're watching the live stream or one of our amazing recordings, hopefully you're having a wonderful morning, evening or good night with that.
Thank you, Pod. If you want to still bring out your Viking hats or give a shout out or hello.
We've also had like a pet parade in certain cases.
Nice try, Johnny.
I don't have sponsors or credits to roll, so there we go. All right.
Good job, Johnny. Good job, Rachel. Great job, guys. Thanks, guys. Go ahead, Rachel.
I want my Viking hat. Ryan, I want a trailer.
You know, we can't always get what we want. And with that, hopefully everyone had a wonderful show and have a wonderful morning, good evening or good night.
Thanks, Dan. Bye. Thanks, Dan.