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Lightning Fill In The Blank

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Now it's time to move on to 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 he or she can. Each correct answer now worth two points. Bill, can you give us the scores?

BILL KURTIS: Ken and Roy have four each, Amy has three.

KEN JENNINGS: Tight game.

KURTIS: It's only one away.

SAGAL: Yeah, OK.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So, Amy, you are in third place. You're up first. The clock will start when I begin your first question, fill in the blank. On Tuesday, federal authorities busted a global currency exchange company for running a $6 billion blank operation.

AMY DICKINSON: Ponzi, no.

SAGAL: No, it was a money laundering operation.

DICKINSON: Oh.

SAGAL: The White House, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bloomberg's gun control group all received letters this week containing blank.

DICKINSON: Ricin?

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: USDA officials are investigating how an unapproved strain of wheat that had been blanked turned up in Oregon.

DICKINSON: Genetically altered?

SAGAL: Yes, genetically modified by Monsanto.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: No-kill shelters in Chicago took in animals from Oklahoma this week to make room for pets displaced by the recent blanks there.

DICKINSON: Tornadoes.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: A Romanian man is suing an Orthodox church for failing to exorcise the demons who he says had been blanking.

(LAUGHTER)

DICKINSON: The demons had been possessing him?

SAGAL: No. The demons had been farting in his home.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It's sure not him. Organizers who arranged for Dennis Rodman to visit North Korea said this week that blank had actually been their first choice.

DICKINSON: Michael Jordan.

SAGAL: Yes, indeed.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: In the classic example of why you should not date in your workplace...

(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)

SAGAL: ...Danica Patrick's boyfriend is in the doghouse for blanking.

DICKINSON: Oh, running her off the road?

SAGAL: Yes, crashing into her in the Coca-Cola 600.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Things were going great when Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., their friends get along, they like the same Turtle Wax - and then he had to go and bump her in the Coca-Cola 600 making her crash into another driver. Not to worry, though, not even the flame retardant suit she was wearing could extinguish the flame of their love.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Amy do in our quiz?

KURTIS: She got six more points, that's 12 and a total of 15.

SAGAL: Well done.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: All right. We've flipped a coin and Ken has elected to go last. So, Roy, you are up next, fill in the blank. President Obama said he would confront President Xi Jinping after hackers from blank accessed blueprints for U.S. weapons systems.

ROY BLOUNT JR.: China.

SAGAL: Right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: On Wednesday NASDAQ was hit with a $10 million fine for violating securities law with the IPO for social network blank.

JR.: Facebook.

SAGAL: Right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: This year for the first time, a vocabulary test was included as part of the national blank.

JR.: Spelling bee?

SAGAL: Spelling bee.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: A German woman was surprised to discover that the pranksters who kept ringing her doorbell at 3:00 a.m. were actually blank.

JR.: German.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: No. A colony of ants. Because of Lance Armstrong's recent admissions of doping, Nike announced this week that it is severing ties with blank.

JR.: With his cancer organization.

SAGAL: Yeah, Livestrong it's called.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Netflix declined to say how many subscribers have viewed the fourth season of the revived series blank after it was posted online on Sunday.

JR.: "Arrested Development."

SAGAL: Right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Sales skyrocketed after shoppers noted...

(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)

SAGAL: ...that a teakettle advertised on the JCPenney billboard blanked.

JR.: Looked like Hitler.

SAGAL: It did.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: This Michael Graves designed teakettle has a handle that looked like Hitler's hair and a little moustache-like knob on the top and a spout extended in that classic "Tea Heil" pose.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It sold out so quickly that JCPenney is now planning a world tyrants line of products...

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: ...Joseph Stalin moustache toothbrushes, Musso-linguini and of course Pol Pots.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Roy do on our quiz?

KURTIS: Well, he did well. He got six points. That gives him 12 more points and he has the lead with 16.

SAGAL: All right.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: And let me ask the famous question, how many then does Ken Jennings need to win?

KURTIS: Six to tie, seven to win.

JENNINGS: I don't know.

SAGAL: How do you play this game, he said?

(LAUGHTER)

JENNINGS: Can I answer in the form of a question?

(LAUGHTER)

JENNINGS: It'll make me feel at ease.

SAGAL: I understand, Ken. This is for the game, fill in the blank. In a $4.7 billion takeover deal, Smithfield Foods agreed to sell itself to a company in blank.

JENNINGS: China.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: The World Health Organization issued warnings this week about a new SARS-like blank.

JENNINGS: Virus.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Union representatives announced plans to sue the Chicago Sun Times after it fired all of its blanks on Thursday.

JENNINGS: Photographers.

SAGAL: Right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: A British man accused of shoplifting a chunk of raw beef said he only did it because blank.

JENNINGS: Because his iguana was hungry.

SAGAL: No. Because it reminded him of his grandmother.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: This week, Royal Caribbean became the latest company to have one of its blanks catch on fire while at sea.

JENNINGS: Cruise ships.

SAGAL: Right.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Federal investigators worked to determine what caused the train to derail and explode in blank this week.

JENNINGS: Baltimore?

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: The TV news crew in Maine reporting live...

(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)

SAGAL: ...about a missing person was interrupted by blank.

JENNINGS: The missing person wandering through the shot.

SAGAL: Exactly right.

(APPLAUSE)

JENNINGS: Hello.

SAGAL: Reporter Norm Karkos of WMTM News 8 was about to do his hard hitting piece in the disappearance of Robert McDonough when the missing Robert McDonough wandered into the shot and said hi to everyone.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Karkos abandoned the report, but was further frustrated when his segment about a kitten caught in a tree ended with the kitten hopping onto his shoulder and his story about a local drought was rained out.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Ken Jennings do in our quiz?

KURTIS: Well, Ken needed six to tie. He got six, which happens to be exactly the number that Roy has. So it's a tie.

JR.: Oh, wow.

(APPLAUSE)

JENNINGS: I could've made a million dollars on Jeopardy.

SAGAL: I know.

JENNINGS: What am I doing here?

SAGAL: In just a minute, we're going to ask our panelists, now we've seen Obama and Christie making eyes at each other, what'll be the next big bromance.

(SOUNDBITE OF SHOW CREDITS) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.