A horrible question for many reasons. It requires not just knowledge of Monopoly, but instant recollection thereof. It says more about the questioner's limited world view (presumes everyone knows about X, where X is irrelevant to the job) than the interviewer's intelligence. It is a learnable answer: skim How Would You Move Mt. Fuji? and similar "clever question" books and you can recall the answer rather than deducing it (the latter being far more important to the job). The worst part, I think, is the automatic dismissal of any creative & applicable "wrong" answer; before seeing the "Monopoly" reference, I was imagining some despairing ex-executive cashing out his life savings, putting it in the car with a can of gasoline, pushing it down a hill into the offending hotel and watching it all go up in smoke ... but because I didn't say "Monopoly", no credit for creativity etc.

On that last point, I recall interviewing at Microsoft: Asked questions about automatic control of venetian blinds, for one question I knew I was missing some obvious simple checkbox-type answer. I told her "I know I'm missing the obvious here, so I'm just gonna pick some alternative solution and talk thru it so you can see how I think" and proceeded to elaborate on a complex yet viable & marketing-impressive implementation. Wasn't gonna let some "correct" answer stand in my way...