PETER SAGAL, HOST:
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 they can. Each correct answer is now worth two points. Bill, can you give us the scores?
BILL KURTIS: (Laughter) I can. Alonzo has four. Roxanne and Peter each have three.
SAGAL: We've flipped a coin. Roxanne has elected to go first. The clock will start when I begin your first question. Fill in the blank. This week, a high court in the U.K. ruled that a parliamentary vote was required before Britain could proceed with blank.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Brexit.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: On Thursday, Iraqi troops entered the ISIS-held city of blank.
ROBERTS: Mosul.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Late Wednesday, central Italy was hit by the fourth blank in two weeks.
ROBERTS: Earthquake.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: This week, CNN confirmed that they had cut ties with Donna Brazile for allegedly leaking debate questions to blank.
ROBERTS: Hillary Clinton.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: After 50 years, the Jacksonville Suns baseball team announced it was changing its name to blank.
ROBERTS: Jacksonville Daughters.
SAGAL: No, the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: During a speech this week, Pope Francis said that the Catholic Church would likely never allow blanks to serve as priests.
ROBERTS: Female priests.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Garth Brooks, Chris Stapleton and Carrie Underwood were the big winners at this year's blank awards.
ROBERTS: CMAs.
SAGAL: Right, Country Music Awards, just down the street.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: A woman in Germany lost her driver's license this week after she blanked.
ROBERTS: She applied naked at the German Department of Motor Vehicles and they rejected her because she was not drunk enough.
SAGAL: No, she drove to the police station drunk at 3 a.m. to apply for a job.
ROBERTS: Same thing - so close.
SAGAL: That is true.
PETER GROSZ: Pretty close.
ROBERTS: Half a point.
GROSZ: A few key words were in there.
ROBERTS: Half a point.
GROSZ: When she asked for a job application at 3 in the morning, the officer on duty suspected she might be drunk and asked her to take a breathalyzer test, which showed that she was well above the legal limit. The woman was able to spin it to her advantage. She told the officer, quote, "this is just proof that I'm a hard worker and I don't give anything less than 110 percent, not even my blood alcohol level."
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Bill, how did Roxanne do on our quiz?
KURTIS: She got six right, 12 more points, total of 15, and she has the lead.
SAGAL: All right then.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: All right, Peter. You're up next. Fill in the blank. On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a 50 percent increase in open enrollment for blank.
GROSZ: Obamacare?
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: At the end of a two-day meeting, the Fed announced they would leave blank unchanged.
GROSZ: The interest rate.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: According to a new report from the International Energy Agency, blank now accounts for 23 percent of global power.
GROSZ: China.
SAGAL: Renewable energy.
GROSZ: Oh.
SAGAL: On Thursday, researchers found that blank mutated during the West African epidemic.
GROSZ: Ebola.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: This week, Montana Millz, the rapper behind a song called "Sell Drugz" was arrested for blanking.
GROSZ: Selling drugs?
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: This week, several Republican lawmakers suggested that Paul Ryan would step down as blank after the election.
GROSZ: House Speaker.
SAGAL: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: Customizable wine bottles and her own cookbook were just a few of the items on blank's 2016 list of her favorite things.
GROSZ: (Laughter) Gwyneth Paltrow?
SAGAL: No, Oprah.
GROSZ: OK, good.
SAGAL: Glamour magazine released their annual Woman of the Year issue this week, which included Simone Biles, Christine Lagarde, and blank.
GROSZ: Women of the year?
SAGAL: Yes.
GROSZ: Donald Trump.
SAGAL: No, it's Bono. Bono, who, after forcing his music onto your iPhone, has gotten pretty good at showing up in places where he doesn't belong, was named one of Glamour magazine's women of the year. Glamour uses such criteria in their search for Woman of the Year as checking the candidate's contributions to global good and never looking at the candidate's Adam's apple.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Bill, how did Peter do on our quiz?
KURTIS: Peter got five right, 10 more points, total of 13, but Roxanne still has the lead.
SAGAL: All right.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Therefore, it's a question - how much does Alonzo need to beat Roxanne?
KURTIS: He needs six.
SAGAL: All right, Alonzo.
ALONZO BODDEN: Pressure, pressure.
KURTIS: This is for the game. Fill in the blank. On Wednesday, President Obama said the Army Corps of Engineers was weighing whether or not to reroute the blank pipeline.
BODDEN: Dakota Access.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: This week, the U.N. warned that the Paris agreement would not be enough to stave off the worst effects of blank.
BODDEN: Global warming?
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: This week, an FBI-related Twitter account released information on blank's pardon of financier Marc Rich.
BODDEN: Barack Obama.
SAGAL: No, Bill Clinton's from 15 years ago. Demonstrating that Donald Trump is correct to worry about voter fraud, this week a woman in Iowa was arrested for allegedly voting for blank twice.
BODDEN: Donald Trump.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: A man in rural Australia, trying to find a restroom, was surprised when he instead found blank.
BODDEN: He was trying to find a restroom and instead he found...
SAGAL: And instead he found blank.
BODDEN: ...Gold?
SAGAL: No, and found the never before discovered ruins of an ancient civilization.
(LAUGHTER)
BODDEN: That's the same thing.
SAGAL: Pretty much. On Sunday, three astronauts returned to Earth after spending four months on blank.
BODDEN: Space stations? Chinese space...
SAGAL: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: After being robbed at gunpoint in Paris last month, blank reportedly fired her longtime bodyguard.
BODDEN: Kim Kardashian.
SAGAL: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
SAGAL: This week, New York's Metropolitan Opera was forced to cancel a performance when a man blanked during intermission.
BODDEN: Oh, died?
SAGAL: No, when he dumped his friend's ashes into the orchestra pit.
GROSZ: (Laughter) I read about this.
BODDEN: So close.
SAGAL: According to the Met, audience members caught the man dumping a suspicious white powder into the pit during the second intermission. This led to the performance being canceled, though it was later revealed the powder was actually just cremains and the man was simply trying to honor his mentor's final wish, which was to finally make something interesting happen at the opera.
ROBERTS: Oh.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Bill, did Alonzo Bodden do well enough to win?
KURTIS: He got five right, 10 more points, total of 14 - very close, but he couldn't catch Roxanne.
SAGAL: Oh, Roxanne Roberts - she loves to win because she's good at it.
(APPLAUSE) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.