DREW CAREY, 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 is worth two points. Carl, can you give us the scores?
CARL KASELL: Tom Bodett has the lead. He has three points. Brian Babylon has two. Kyrie O'Connor has one.
CAREY: So, Kyrie O'Connor, you're in third place, so you're up first. The clock will start when I begin your first question. Fill in the blank. On Thursday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed blank for a second term.
KYRIE O'CONNOR: Barack Obama.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: Saying they'd engaged in brazen mortgage fraud, on Wednesday federal prosecutors filed a $1 billion lawsuit against blank.
O'CONNOR: Bank of America.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: To once again refute charges that he's dead, former Cuban leader blank said Monday he's quote "so healthy he doesn't even remember what a headache is."
O'CONNOR: Fidel Castro.
CAREY: Yes.
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CAREY: After a strong third quarter showing, on Wednesday stock for the social network blank jumped 20 percent.
O'CONNOR: Facebook.
CAREY: Yes.
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CAREY: On Thursday, Barack Obama became the first president to take advantage of early blank.
O'CONNOR: Voting.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: And tying up the traffic all over Chicago.
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: Because of Mitt Romney's attack on PBS, costume stores report that their blank costumes are selling out.
O'CONNOR: Big Bird.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: The makers of Banana Boat sunscreen have issued a recall after some users reportedly blanked after using it.
(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)
O'CONNOR: Died.
CAREY: Worse.
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: They caught on fire.
O'CONNOR: Oh.
CAREY: Yeah. To be clear, the Banana Boat sunscreen won't spontaneously combust, it has to come into contact with a flame or spark, at which point you go up like the last scene in every stuntman's highlight reel.
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: So if you're worried about the sun burning your skin, Banana Boat has a solution, no more skin.
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: Banana Boat has apologized and said the Kingsford line of sunscreens probably wasn't a good idea in the first place.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
CAREY: Carl, how did Kyrie do?
KASELL: Kyrie had 6 correct answers for 12 more points. She now has 13 points and the lead.
(APPLAUSE)
CAREY: OK, Brian, you're up next.
BRIAN BABYLON: Yes.
CAREY: Fill in the blank. In what he said would be a game changing announcement Wednesday, blank offered President Obama $5 million for his college transcripts.
BABYLON: Donald Trump.
CAREY: Yeah.
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CAREY: The TSA announced this week that in New York and many other large airports, they will be replacing the invasive blank.
BABYLON: X-ray scanner.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: Cities along the East Coast braced for a possible hit next week by the blank currently hitting Cuba.
BABYLON: Hurricane.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: This week the San Francisco Giants and the Detroit Tigers faced off in this year's blank.
BABYLON: World Series.
CAREY: I know it's easy, but it's NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: A Texas woman got out of one day of work by simply blanking.
BABYLON: Fainting.
CAREY: No, she tied herself up, leaving herself in a field to fake her own kidnapping.
(LAUGHTER)
TOM BODETT: True story.
CAREY: After Monday's debate, Mitt Romney's son Tagg apologized to blank for saying he wanted to take a swing at him.
BABYLON: Obama.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: In his first live television appearance in 20 years, Guns N Roses singer blank appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel show on Wednesday.
BABYLON: Axl Rose.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: How about that? A team of paleontologists have discovered our earliest human ancestor was a blank.
(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)
BABYLON: Shrew.
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: No, it starts with an "S," a squirrel.
BABYLON: It's that a shrew?
CAREY: Got me.
BABYLON: A shrew is a squirrel in my community, man.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
BABYLON: I don't know. Man, on the south side a shrew is a squirrel.
CAREY: The scientists have unveiled the Purgatorius, which is not where you go when you die in Latin class.
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: It's a tiny rodent-like primate that scurried across phone lines 65 million years ago.
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: This little critter had large claws and a bushy tail, directly linking it to the Kardashians, who are, oddly enough, perfectly adapted to store nuts.
(LAUGHTER)
BABYLON: That's a shrew.
CAREY: Carl, how did Brian do?
KASELL: Brian had 6 correct answers, for 12 more points. He now has 14 points, and Brian has taken the lead.
CAREY: Oh, watch out.
(APPLAUSE)
CAREY: Watch out.
BODETT: Oh no.
CAREY: And Carl, how many does Tom need to win?
KASELL: Six correct answers.
CAREY: Six correct answers. OK, Tom, this is for the game. Fill in the blank. On Monday, blank was officially stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life.
BODETT: Lance Armstrong.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
BODETT: Because of the Muslim holiday, the army command in blank agreed to a ceasefire over the weekend.
Syria.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: On Thursday, Microsoft officially launched their new operating system, blank.
BODETT: Windows 8.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: On Wednesday, it was reported that credit card thieves had tampered with swipe pads in 63 blank stores in nine states.
BODETT: Hooters.
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: Barnes & Noble. Six Italian seismologists and one government official were convicted of manslaughter this week for failing to predict a blank.
BODETT: An earthquake.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: In an appearance on "The Tonight Show" Wednesday, President Obama said that his differences with Donald Trump go back to their childhood days in blank.
BODETT: In - what was that? I don't think he said Kenya.
(LAUGHTER)
BODETT: Kenya.
CAREY: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
CAREY: Yes, you can. A man is suing the New York Public Library after they kicked him out because he is blank.
(SOUNDBITE OF GONG)
BODETT: A really smelly person.
CAREY: Yes, he was stinky.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
CAREY: First of all, this isn't the stinky old man at your library, this is a different stinky old man at a different library.
(LAUGHTER)
CAREY: Mr. Stillman, a Korean War veteran and long-distance runner, insists he has no body odor but you don't want to see somebody coming out of a library going "Do not go in there. Whoo. You got to give it five minutes." It's true that most people can't smell their own stink, which is why the Cleveland Browns continue to play every Sunday.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
CAREY: There's just no other way to explain it. Carl, did Tom do well enough to win?
KASELL: He needed six correct answers and he had six correct answers. So with 15 points, Tom Bodett is this week's champion.
(APPLAUSE)
CAREY: Congratulations.
BABYLON: Can I just say - so we're still not letting me get the shrew?
(LAUGHTER)
BABYLON: That's cool, man.
BODETT: It sounded shrew-like to me in the description.
BABYLON: I know, very shrewish.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.