PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Now onto our final game, Lightning Fill in the Blank. Each of our players will have 60 seconds in which to answer as many fill in the blank questions as they can, each correct answer now worth two points. Carl, can you give us the scores?
CARL KASELL: Paula Poundstone has the lead, Peter. She has three points.
SAGAL: Whoa.
KASELL: Bobcat Goldthwait and Faith Salie, they both have two points.
SAGAL: OK.
BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: I'm going to bomb so hard today.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Really?
GOLDTHWAIT: Yeah.
SAGAL: Here we go. We flipped a coin. Faith has elected to go first. The clock will start when I begin your first question. Fill in the blank. This week North Korea disconnected its emergency hotline to South Korea and nullified the 1953 armistice that ended the blank.
FAITH SALIE: The war.
SAGAL: Which war?
SALIE: The Korean War.
SAGAL: Yeah, the Korean War.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Commission approved the renewal of a ban on military style blank.
SALIE: Assault weapons.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Snack cake fans rejoiced at the news that now that a buyer had purchased Hostess for $420 million, they will get their blanks back.
SALIE: Twinkies.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: NASA officially announced this week that rover tests show that life could have existed on blank.
SALIE: Mars.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Two high school students in Indonesia won a Science prize for managing to make air freshener out of blank.
SALIE: Oh. Killer dolphins.
SAGAL: No.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Cow dung.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Lawmakers in Missouri and Florida who hate changing their clocks proposed making blank permanent year round.
SALIE: Daylight Savings Time.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Michael Taylor of the Oakland A's has missed a week of training camp because he injured his pinkie finger when he tried to blank.
(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)
SALIE: Oh. High five his coach.
SAGAL: Almost. Throw away his chewed gum.
SALIE: Wow.
SAGAL: Michael Taylor made a common rookie mistake - he tried to chuck his used gum away overhand, and in the process smashed his hand into the light dangling from the ceiling of the dugout. He's expected to make a full recovery, and the good news is it wasn't his chewing hand.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Carl, how did Faith do on our quiz?
KASELL: Faith had five correct answers for ten more points. She now has 12 points, and Faith has taken the lead.
SAGAL: All right.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: OK, Bobcat, you're up next. Fill in the blank. On Tuesday, the FAA approved Boeing's plan to fix the battery problems in its blanks.
GOLDTHWAIT: The planes.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That's true. What planes particular?
GOLDTHWAIT: What is it, the 747s?
SAGAL: No, the Dreamliners. Scientists in Venezuela this week said that embalming the body of blank for display might be more difficult than they thought.
GOLDTHWAIT: The new pope.
SAGAL: No.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Hugo Chavez. On Thursday, Xi Jinping was chosen to replace Hu Jintao as the president of blank.
GOLDTHWAIT: Oh, I know this one.
SAGAL: Yes.
GOLDTHWAIT: Can I have it again?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Xi Jinping was chosen to replace Hu Jintao as president of blank. China, Bobcat, China. A man who returned a library book 69 years late said he wasn't able to return it earlier because of blank.
GOLDTHWAIT: He was married to the librarian.
SAGAL: No. World War II. Kwame Kilpatrick, the former mayor of blank was convicted Monday on corruption charges.
GOLDTHWAIT: Is it in the United States?
SAGAL: It really is.
(LAUGHTER)
GOLDTHWAIT: D.C.
SAGAL: No, that would be Detroit. After coming under criticism from flight attendants, air marshals and legislators, on Thursday the head of the TSA defended the decision to allow blanks on planes.
GOLDTHWAIT: Exacto knives.
SAGAL: You know, I'm going to give you that one.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: You're right, knives.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Little knives, short-bladed knives. That's good. A 71-year-old retired teacher in Cincinnati was sent to jail last week because he blanked.
(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)
GOLDTHWAIT: A 71-year old.
SAGAL: Yes.
GOLDTHWAIT: Why would I know this?
(LAUGHTER)
GOLDTHWAIT: What did he do?
SAGAL: He went to jail because he wanted to check it off his bucket list.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: No.
SAGAL: When police pulled Obie Cargile over for having a broken tail light, he confessed to his crime, pleaded guilty and refused to pay the fine, just so he could check "going to jail" off of his bucket list. Cargile happily spent his two and a half days in maximum security prison jogging, avoiding the gangs of neo Nazis, and taking a course called "Shiv Making 101."
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Carl.
GOLDTHWAIT: Wait, let's see how I did.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: How did Bobcat do?
GOLDTHWAIT: I feel really good about this.
(LAUGHTER)
KASELL: One correct answer, Peter.
SAGAL: Yes.
(APPLAUSE)
GOLDTHWAIT: Thank you.
KASELL: Two more points.
GOLDTHWAIT: I will say that's a personal best. I'm very excited about that.
SAGAL: That is excellent.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: OK, Carl, how many does Paula need to win?
KASELL: Five correct answers.
SAGAL: All right, Paula, you can do this. This is within your reach. This is for the game. Although he had planned to travel to Castle Gandolfo on his first day, Pope Francis postponed that trip to visit blank.
POUNDSTONE: Italy.
SAGAL: No. He was already in Italy.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah.
SAGAL: He visited Pope Emeritus Benedict.
This week passengers on yet another blank experienced power problems and non-working toilets.
POUNDSTONE: Cruise, Carnival.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Because they violated people's privacy while collecting data for their Street View function, blank was fined $7 million.
POUNDSTONE: Google.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Physicists announced Thursday that tests confirmed that they have discovered the blank particle.
POUNDSTONE: I don't know. Higgs Boson.
SAGAL: Yeah, the Higgs Boson.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: A zookeeper in Calgary was fired after the gorillas he was watching blanked.
POUNDSTONE: Got out. Well they got loose and then they raided the kitchen.
Oh, yeah.
SAGAL: A kick-starter campaign to raise $2 million to fund a movie of the TV show blank reached its goal in less than one day.
POUNDSTONE: Valerie something.
SAGAL: No, you're close. It's Veronica Mars. Iran's state run press TV announced that the country is hiring lawyers to sue the filmmakers behind blank for anti Iran propaganda.
POUNDSTONE: Oh, "Argo."
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: To avoid China's seat belt laws, drivers in China have started blanking.
(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)
POUNDSTONE: Carrying their cars.
SAGAL: No, they have started wearing t-shirts with seatbelts printed on them.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Brilliant. Police peer through the window, they see a diagonal black strap across their chest and they think you're strapped in, as the law requires. But no, it's a t-shirt, ha, ha.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: And as you're sailing through your windshield after rear ending somebody at 40-miles-an-hour, you'll surely be thinking, "suckers." Carl, did Paula do well enough to win?
KASELL: She needed five correct answers. Paula had just four correct answers.
POUNDSTONE: Oh, there it is.
KASELL: That is a total of 11 points. So with 12 points, Faith Salie is this week's champion.
SAGAL: Oh, I thought you had it, Paula. I thought you had it.
(APPLAUSE)
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.