How close is this to Apples?

Indeed - one of the reasons A2A works is that players have such a limited answerpool to choose from. And even then there are variants that can be used to constrain answers: requiring a person to be entered for instance.
One of the major reasons A2A works is that it *avoids* the very "writing the answer down" stumbling-block that causes trouble with so many similar games (not to mention the whole handwriting issue, both from an illegibility and an indentification pov.)
Having said that, I can see some interesting twists on the idea.
How about requiring the Judge to pick *three* answers. All non-selected players score -1. The judge now selects one of those answers as the "winner", the twist being that this answer scores no points and the other two score one point each. So you need to submit an answer that's quite good but not brilliant. (Actually, this sounds like a slightly less interesting version of "Get Paul A Promotion" but hey, you could call it "Get Paul an Apple" ;-))

The new game from Cranium, Whoonu, actually uses a similar mechanic as Apples to Apples. I may be mistaken on the details of the mechanic, but I believe after players are dealt cards, they need to choose one that represents the "favorite" of whoever's turn it is. For instance, if I'm holding cards that say Poodles, Ice Cream, Fast Cars, Cheese, and Books, and it's Tommy's turn, I need to throw a card into the pile that I think Tommy will rank high on his list of favorites. Everyone else does the same. Then Tommy ranks them and people score points accordingly. You do the same with your remaining cards when it's Brenda's turn.

As an aside, the game Whoonu was actually created by a company called Gabba Games, not Cranium - their website was once www.gabbagames.com, but has since disappeared likely because of contractual requirements after selling the game to Cranium. It was originally called Love It or Lump It.

Chip

Like It or Lump It did well as an independently produced game, especially considering that it was only around I believe for a little over a year. It could also become a sort of collectors item depending I guess on how well Whoonu sells. Originally 10,000 copies of Like It or Lump It were made. 4,000 to 5,000 were sold to consumers before Cranium snatched up the rights. The creator of the game understandably wasn't allowed to sell the remaining games and I'm assuming they've been destroyed.

Chip