PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Now, 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. Carl, can you give us the scores?
CARL KASELL: We have a tie for first place, Peter. Charlie Pierce and Adam Felber, they both have three points. Paula Pell has two.
SAGAL: All right. So, Paula, you are, indeed, in third place. That means you're up first. The clock will start when I begin your first question. Fill in the blank. This week James Holmes was officially charged on 142 counts for the recent shootings in blank.
PAULA PELL: Colorado.
SAGAL: Yes, Colorado.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: This week famous Polish dissident Lech Vawensa gave a strong endorsement to blank.
PELL: Barack Obama.
SAGAL: No, actually the other guy, Mitt Romney.
PELL: Mitt Romney.
SAGAL: After a hiker spotted it in a Swiss forest, a missing blank was returned to its rightful owners.
PELL: Sheep.
SAGAL: No.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: A six-foot long sausage.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: This week images...
PELL: Attached to a sheep.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: This week, images from space show that the U.S. blanks planted on the moon 43 years ago are still there.
PELL: Flags.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Jonah Lehrer resigned as staff writer at the New Yorker after he was found to have fabricated quotes by blank.
PELL: By Bob Dylan.
SAGAL: Right. In fact, one suspicion thing, the quotes made too much sense. In its ever expanding quest to take over the world a Starbucks recently opened in a blank.
(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)
PELL: Inside a funeral home.
SAGAL: Yes, very good, Paula.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
PELL: It's true.
SAGAL: Yes, it's true.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Mourners at the Robinson Funeral Home in South Carolina can now enjoy an iced Americano or Frappucino while paying their respects. It's controversial, as you'd expect. Critics suspect many people are passing away just to get free wi-fi.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: This is the boldest franchise they'd ever built since the famous Recursive Starbucks. That's a Starbucks inside a Starbucks inside a Starbucks.
ADAM FELBER: That was a good one.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Carl, how did Paula do on our quiz?
KASELL: Paula had four correct answers, for eight more points. She now has ten points, and Paula has the lead.
SAGAL: All right.
(APPLAUSE)
PELL: For two more seconds.
SAGAL: All right, we have flipped a coin. Charlie has elected to go last. So Adam, you are up next. Fill in the blank. Power was finally restored this week after a massive grid failure left over 600 million people without electricity in blank.
FELBER: India.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: In the hopes of derailing its nuclear program, Congress voted on Wednesday to increase sanctions against blank.
FELBER: Iran.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: In an interview last Sunday, blank said it had been a mistake for John McCain to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate.
FELBER: Dick Cheney.
SAGAL: Yes, indeed.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: A United flight safely landed in Denver Tuesday after being hit by a blank that tore a hole in the plane's nose.
FELBER: Bird.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: A man in Tennessee thought his girlfriend was cheating when he found a picture of a handsome man on her Facebook page but it turned out to be blank.
FELBER: Mitt Romney.
SAGAL: Indeed.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: British equestrienne Zara Philips, best known as the granddaughter of the blank won a silver Olympic medal in the team event.
FELBER: Screwdriver.
SAGAL: No.
CHARLIE PIERCE: Screwdriver?
FELBER: Philips.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: No, granddaughter of the Queen.
FELBER: Oh.
SAGAL: A week after she was caught cheating, Kristin Stewart and estranged boyfriend Robert Pattinson battled for custody of their blank.
FELBER: Dog.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Swiss emergency services were called and an office building was evacuated after staffers spotted a blank on a table.
(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)
FELBER: Platypus.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: A plastic spider. Once the building was evacuated, police experts quickly determined that the spider in question wasn't a Goliath Birdeating Spider, member of the Tarantula family, but instead it was a Fake Plastic Spider, of the Made in Taiwan family.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Police were not amused by this - and this is true - after the incident, workers at the firm were forced to take part in a 20 minute instructional lecture entitled "how to tell the difference between real spiders and plastic toys."
(LAUGHTER)
FELBER: You know, you raise an interesting point, because I would be willing to bet that in Taiwan when people see a real dangerous spider, they don't believe it.
SAGAL: That's true. They're like, oh, it's just another plastic one crawling up my arm.
FELBER: We have millions of these.
SAGAL: Carl, how did Adam do on our quiz?
KASELL: Adam had six correct answers, for 12 more points. He now has 15 points, and Adam has taken the lead.
SAGAL: Well done.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: All right then, so how many does Charlie need to win?
KASELL: Six to tie, seven to win outright.
SAGAL: Here we go. Here we go, Charlie, this is for the game Celebrated author and playwright blank died on Tuesday at age 86.
PIERCE: Gore Vidal.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: After struggling for months to resolve the conflict, on Thursday, Kofi Annan quit his job as U.N. peace envoy to blank.
PIERCE: Syria.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Officials in Uganda warned against physical contact as the blank virus continued to spread.
PIERCE: Ebola.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: According to an internal finding, nearly 9% of users of the social network blank are fake.
PIERCE: Facebook.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: An Australian man was hospitalized this week after his plan to blank at a party backfired.
PIERCE: Place a firecracker up his butt.
SAGAL: Indeed.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Police are investigating...
FELBER: You guessed that.
SAGAL: Police are investigating after another blank was found in a meal on an airplane this week.
PIERCE: Needle.
SAGAL: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: In a new survey of movie critics, the Hitchcock movie "Vertigo" has bumped the movie blank out of the number one spot.
PIERCE: "Citizen Kane."
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: At a minor league game in Daytona, Florida on Wednesday, the umpire tossed blank out of the game.
(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)
PIERCE: The mascot.
SAGAL: No, the stadium organist.
(LAUGHTER)
PIERCE: Thank god. I have so wanted to do that. I hate stadium organists.
SAGAL: The umpire got mad when he heard the unpaid organist play "Three Blind Mice" over the PA.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: He turned, he pointed up to the booth. He shouted "you're out" and ordered the PA turned off for the rest of the game. Then he got really mad, when the entire crowd started humming the obscure folk tune, "The Really, Really, Really Touchy Umpire."
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Carl, how did Charlie do on our quiz?
(LAUGHTER)
KASELL: Well Charlie needed at least seven correct answers to win, and he had seven correct answers.
(APPLAUSE)
KASELL: So with 17 points, Charlie Pierce is this week's champion.
SAGAL: Well done.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.