BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR in WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill's Kurtis. We're playing this week with Faith Salie, Adam Felber and Mo Rocca. And here again is your host at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you Bill.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: You know, the one question we get more than any other here at WAIT WAIT is why didn't anyone stop you before it was too late? But the second most common one is what goes on at WAIT WAIT, you know, behind the scenes, like the secret stuff no one knows about? Well, the secrets are out. We made some videos that will answer your questions. Maybe shock you a little, maybe scare you, maybe give you some hope for the human race. You can see them all at waitwait.npr.org.
Right now it's time for the WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME Bluff The Listener Game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
NATALIA GRIFFIN: Hi, this is Natalia in St. Louis.
SAGAL: Hey, Natalia. How are you?
GRIFFIN: I'm great.
SAGAL: Now St. Louis is great. It's been going through some tough times recently, but what do you do there?
GRIFFIN: I tell the future of beer.
SAGAL: You what?
GRIFFIN: I do econometric forecasting for a large local brewery. So I literally tell the future of beer.
SAGAL: Can you tell us something about beer that we would be surprised by? Something that - what's going to happen in beer - three years from now, everybody's good to be drinking what?
GRIFFIN: Craft beer.
SAGAL: Craft beer.
GRIFFIN: Lots and lots of craft beer.
SAGAL: Really?
ADAM FELBER: I can tell you something about beer. The second largest annual beer drinking event in the United States is right here in New Jersey at Princeton's annual reunion.
(APPLAUSE)
MO ROCCA: I'm going to fact check that.
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SAGAL: Well, welcome to the shown Natalia. Now you're going to take your perception, your amazing powers thereof, and play our game in which you must try tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Natalia's topic?
KURTIS: The Prize Is Mine And Mine Alone. (Laughter).
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: There's nothing like being a winner, even if what you win is nothing anybody would ever want. Now we heard a story this week that tests that assumption. Each of our panelists are going to tell you a news story about a chance to win a really unusual prize. Guess the real story, you will win the best prize of all, Carl Kasell's voice. You ready to play this?
GRIFFIN: Yes.
SAGAL: All right. First up let's hear from Faith Salie.
FAITH SALIE: For years Vladimir Putin has been attempting to boost Russian fertility by displaying himself shirtless, presumably to get the whole country in the mood. Turns out his country women have gotten bigger, just not with babies. Now Putin is setting his sights on the booming obesity rate among Russian ladies. His government have announced a national fitness competition to find the motherland's most vigorous vixen. The tight lucky winner's prize will be a horseback ride with Putin himself through the Siberian mountains. In the world's sexiest Slavic photo op, both she and the president will be topless. Putin promise to canter. The fitness challenges are designed to display both strength and femininity through feats that smack particularly Russian. These include figure skating and gymnastics, but also speed peeling potatoes for borscht, disassembling Matryoshka dolls and dragging to bed unconscious men who reek of vodka.
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SAGAL: A competition in Russia. The prize is a horseback ride with, on, next to Vladimir Putin himself. Your next story of a strange but seemingly valuable prize comes from Adam Felber.
FELBER: If you're a loyal reader of Britain's Wells Journal, you can stop listening now because you're already Wells aware of their stunning and hotly contested new competition in which one lucky Britt stands to win - wait for it - a part to chip. A crisp - yes. But wait, not just any crisp, an unusually large one. See the journal's newsroom was agog the other day when upon opening a packet of Walkers Cheese and Onion Crisps, a solitary and massive Frankenchip, if you will, presented itself. A 100 millimeter by 55 millimeter beautiful monster. The likes of which not one of the journal's reporters had ever seen.
Knowing a scoop when they saw one, the staff immediately wrote up a news item with an attendant competition to wit, tell us, quote, "why I should win the huge crisp and you could win it."
(LAUGHTER)
FELBER: The original discover of the chip, news editor Oliver, whom is not amused. Quote, "it's not exactly cutting edge journalism is it? Give me strength." Still, others are excited. And the paper's determined to pick a winner before the prize is past its prime, stale and soggy. You know, like Prince Charles.
SAGAL: Oh.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: A very large potato chip being offered as a prize to the readers of a British newspaper. And lastly, your last story of the prize to end all prizes comes from Mo Rocca.
ROCCA: At 355 pounds, William Howard Taft was our heaviest president. He did not, as lead has it, get stuck in a tub. He got stuck in the doors of a Pennsylvania Avenue trolley car for two hours, during which time a scamp snipped off his coattails and a street urchin even stole one of his spats.
Anyway, he did not get stuck in a tub because he had a tub that was built for four. Now that's a White House scandal waiting to open. The extra tubby size tub now sits in Taft's boyhood home in the Mount Auburn section of Cincinnati. To bring more visitors to the home, local station 9107 is sponsoring a very special giveaway. A free bath for four in the Taft tub. The filthiest family in Cincinnati contest has already drawn 93 of the Queen City's most unclean foursomes. As 91.7 host Andy Travis puts it, the family that destains together remains together.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: All right. These are the things, Natalia, that you could win. Use your analytical powers to decide which one is real. Is it from Faith Salie, a chance if you win a fitness competition to go horseback riding topless, presumably, with Vladimir Putin? From Adam Felber, a very large potato chip that was found in a packet of crisps, as they say, at a British newspaper? Or from Mo Rocca, a bath for four in President Taft's own bathtub? Which of these is the real prize we found in the week's news?
GRIFFIN: Wow. I think Taft actually had a giant bathtub, so I think I'm going to go with that one.
SAGAL: You're going to go with Mo's - who, Mo by the way, as we all know, a presidential history enthusiast. And he described the thing about Taft's very large bathtub. You're going to choose his story?
GRIFFIN: Yes.
SAGAL: For the filthiest four in Cincinnati. All right. That's your choice.
GRIFFIN: Are you saying I shouldn't?
SAGAL: I'm not saying anything. Look, you're the person who's supposed to know stuff. All right, well you...
GRIFFIN: All right. Let's go with the potato chip then.
SAGAL: You're choosing Adam's story of the large potato chip?
FELBER: Now that she's had time to Google it, I don't see why she wouldn't answer that.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: To bring you the correct answer, we spoke to one of the people running this contest.
OLIVER HUME: Every morning I buy a pack of the cheese and onions flavored Walkers Crisps. And there it was, pristine and golden on the top of the packet.
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SAGAL: That was Oliver Hume, News Editor at Mid Somerset News & Media and the lucky man who discovered the giant potato chip. Congratulations Natalia, you eventually got it right. Well done. You earned a point for Adam and you have won our prize. Carl Kasell will record the greeting on your home answering machine. Well done. Congratulations.
GRIFFIN: Thank you.
SAGAL: Thank you for playing with us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "POTATO CHIPS")
SLIM GAILLARD: Potato chips, how my mouth just drips. Potato chips, how my mouth just drips. Crunch, crunch, I don't want no lunch. All I want is potato chips. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.