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Limericks

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

Coming up, it's Lightning Fill in the Blank, but first it's the game where you have to listen for the rhyme. If you'd like to play on air, call or leave a message at 1-888-Wait-Wait, that's 1-888-924-8924.

Or you can click the contact us link on our website at waitwait.npr.org. There you can find out about attending our weekly live shows here at the Chase Bank Auditorium in Chicago and our upcoming show in Cleveland on June 28th. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!

OLIVIA COOK: Hi, this is Olivia Cook, calling from Eagle, Idaho.

SAGAL: Hey, how are things in Idaho?

COOK: Oh, it's beautiful here, I love it. It's got a little bit of everything.

ROY BLOUNT JR.: Excuse me. Is it Eagle, Idaho? The town of Eagle?

COOK: Yes. It's about seven miles outside of Boise.

JR.: Do you have a lot of eagles?

(LAUGHTER)

COOK: You know, we have a lot of falcons. I haven't actually seen an eagle.

JR.: Oh. Maybe you would want to change the...

(LAUGHTER)

COOK: I will bring that up at the next city council meeting.

SAGAL: Do that. Olivia, welcome to the show. You're going to play the Listener Limerick Challenge. Your job, of course, Carl is going to read you three news-related limericks, with the last word or phrase missing from each and you just have to finish them for us. Do that two times out of three, you will be a winner. Ready to go?

COOK: Yes, I am so excited.

SAGAL: All right, here we go. Here is your first limerick.

CARL KASELL: For the world's most exciting sale yet, it's a fashion shoot I might regret. With prices so low, you'll lose bladder control. So I model in pants that are?

COOK: Wet.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: To get the word out about their big new summer sale, London department store Harvey Nichols put out a bunch of ads with models peeing their pants. The caption read "try to contain your excitement." It really caught on with fashionistas. Smelling of urine is the new black.

(LAUGHTER)

JR.: Wow.

AMY DICKINSON: Oh, a little edgy.

SAGAL: A little bit.

DICKINSON: A little bit.

JR.: They didn't actually do it, though. They were faking it.

SAGAL: I believe it was photoshopped.

JR.: Maybe some of them wanted to go ahead.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: The method models.

JR.: Yeah.

SAGAL: Here is your next limerick.

KASELL: Though our bones show how big we have been, we dinos have no double chin. To be tough in a fight we had to think light. We dinos were really quite?

COOK: Thin.

SAGAL: Yes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: So, you know, do these fossilized remains make me look fat? According to new evidence, dinosaurs weren't big lumbering beasts, they were actually quite slender. The brachiosaur was thought to weigh 80 tons, but really was a bikini-friendly 23 tons.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That's why he was always like "I'm not fat, I'm giant boned."

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Here's your last limerick.

KASELL: At one hundred and five I'm still fertile, but that old shell won't make my blood curdle. I'll get a divorce and swim a new course. "Till death" is too long for a?

COOK: Turtle.

SAGAL: Right, very good.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Bibi and Poldi - two ancient giant turtles at the Austrian zoo - are divorcing after 115 years of marriage. Both turtles are said to be thriving in their separate enclosures. Bibi's gotten really into very slow marathons and Poldi has taken up with a hot young thing of 85.

(LAUGHTER)

DICKINSON: So, I read about this and they, like, started to fight. And one, like, bit the other's shell.

SAGAL: Yeah.

DICKINSON: Yeah, that was...

SAGAL: They were together for, like, decades and decades.

DICKINSON: Right.

SAGAL: And then all of the sudden they, like, had had enough. They couldn't take it anymore.

DICKINSON: Maybe they tried counseling with, like, a wallaby. They called the kids. They had to talk about it.

JR.: The kids were probably 85, 90.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Carl, how did Olivia do on our quiz?

KASELL: Olivia, you were fabulous. Three correct answers, so you win our prize.

SAGAL: Well done, Olivia.

(APPLAUSE)

COOK: Thank you so much.

SAGAL: Thank you. Thanks so much for playing.

COOK: My pleasure.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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