BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We are playing this week with Aida Rodriguez, Adam Burke and Paula Poundstone.
(APPLAUSE)
KURTIS: And here again is your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you so much, Bill.
(CHEERING)
SAGAL: 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 are on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
DALTON SMITH: My name's Dalton. I'm from Utah.
SAGAL: Hey, where in Utah?
SMITH: Provo.
KURTIS: I love Provo, Utah. That's great. What do you do there?
SMITH: I work as an electrocardiogram technician at the hospital.
SAGAL: Oh, really? So you're the guys who're, like, finding out how people's hearts are doing.
SMITH: That's the one.
SAGAL: Right. Do you ever root for, like, really interesting heartbeats just to break up the monotony?
SMITH: We would never.
SAGAL: No.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, Dalton. You are here to play the game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Dalton's topic?
KURTIS: It's elementary, my dear Sagal.
SAGAL: Everybody loves a mystery. Who murdered whom? What happened to the lost city of Atlantis? Why was John Delaney at the debate?
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: This week, a mystery got solved. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Pick the one who's telling the truth, and you'll win our prize - the WAIT WAITer of your choice on your voicemail. Are you ready to play?
SMITH: Oh, yeah. Let's do this.
SAGAL: All right. Our first mystery and its solution comes from Aida Rodriguez.
AIDA RODRIGUEZ: The small town of Cashmere, Wash., was turned upside down by a missing kid. Stuart Comay (ph), 16, passed his driver's license test, took off for his first joyride and disappeared. When he didn't come home, at first, I didn't worry much because I just assumed he was enjoying our new Chevy Spark, his mother Claire (ph) told the local news. Mrs. Comay finally called the police when he didn't show up for dinner because it was chicken pot pie night...
(LAUGHTER)
RODRIGUEZ: ...And Stuart never misses that. The people of Cashmere mobilized to find Stuart, looking through woods and fields, putting up posters and delivering baked goods to the worried family. But it was Jeremiah Stinson (ph), a local farmer on his way to pick up some supplies from a store in the neighboring town of Coles Corner, who found the boy. He pulled up in front of a newly-installed roundabout at the intersection of Highway 2 and Highway 207 and noticed a small, red Chevy going around...
(LAUGHTER)
RODRIGUEZ: ...And around with an agitated young driver. Apparently, Stuart had driven into the roundabout, realized he didn't learn about anything like that in driving school and got stuck going round and round in it for six hours.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Mrs. Comay was so happy to have her son back, she made an exception and had pot pie night all over again.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: A lost boy found trapped in a roundabout because he didn't know how to get out of it. Your next story of a mystery demystified comes from Adam Burke.
ADAM BURKE: We can all agree - the only thing worse than a McChicken sandwich is a McChicken sandwich that someone's already taken a bite out of.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: That was the situation facing an Indianapolis police officer who went to reheat a McDonald's meal at the beginning of his shift only to find someone had pre-nibbled it. I know I didn't eat it, said the officer, who identified himself to local press as DJ. Officer DJ immediately went to the McDonald's from whence the sandwich originated and demanded to know which cop-hating malefactor had sabotaged his sandwich. A joint investigation was immediately launched by both the golden arches and the boys in blue, just in case anyone in Indianapolis was wondering why it was taking so so long to find your stolen car and/or deliver your McMuffin.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: Eventually, the perpetrator of the masticatory misdeed was brought to light - none other than officer DJ himself. The employee took a bite out of the sandwich upon starting his shift, police said in a statement. He returned nearly seven hours later, having forgotten that he had previously bitten the sandwich.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: The discovery has helped to clear up a number of other investigations that DJ has been working on, including the curious case of who left the front door open...
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: ...The mystery of the missing TV remote...
(LAUGHTER)
BURKE: ...And the baffling riddle of who used up all the toilet paper.
(LAUGHER, APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: A cop launches an investigation to see what prankster took a bite out of his own sandwich, only to discover that it was himself. Your last story of an enigma answered comes from Paula Poundstone.
PAULA POUNDSTONE: When Coral Springs, Fla., residents Nina (ph) and Fred Russio (ph) returned home to their 16-year-old son after a dinner out on Tuesday night, they were shocked to find a gaping hole in the front door. Chairs were flipped. Furniture was in disarray. The couch cushions were wet and hemorrhaging foam. The refrigerator door was swung wide open, exposing its collapsed shelves and empty containers.
I was so angry, Nina Russio said. Romeo (ph) - her son - was sitting at the computer when we left, and there was an eggplant lasagna, a seven-layer dip and a poppy seed bundt cake in the refrigerator. Two and a half hours later, he was sitting there playing Fortnut (ph) or whatever it is, the apartment was a war zone, and there were empty food containers even under the couch. However, young Romeo insisted he had done nothing wrong and had no idea what had happened.
Feeling unjustly accused, Romeo stormed out of the apartment, slamming what was left of the front door, and saw an 11-foot alligator being wrangled into a Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission vehicle. When their neighbors saw the alligator coming out of the front door, they immediately called the nuisance alligator hotline. Authorities are not sure why the mammoth predator broke through the Russios' door and ravaged their apartment, but Romeo's parents were only mildly surprised that their son never noticed.
BURKE: (Laughter).
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: All right. Here are your choices. So one of these was a real mystery that got solved this week. Was it, from Aida, what happened to a lost boy in Washington? Well, it turns out he was just stuck in a roundabout for hours. From Adam Burke, who took a bite out of a cop's hamburger? Well, it turns out it was the cop himself. Or from Paula Poundstone, who trashed this house while a teenager was there supposedly playing video games? Well, it was a large alligator. Which, of these is the real mystery and solution we found out about this week?
SMITH: I'm going to have to go with my man Adam.
SAGAL: All right. Well, you've chosen Adam's story of the cop and the mysterious bite in his sandwich. Well, to bring you the real story, we spoke to someone who had covered it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOSHUA BOTE: The police department and the McDonald's investigated the cause of the bitten sandwich, and it turns out that DJ had already bitten through it earlier in the day.
SAGAL: That was Joshua Bote, who covered the hamburger mystery in Indianapolis for USA Today. Congratulations, Dalton. You got it right. Well done.
(APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: You earned a point for Adam just by telling the truth, and you've won our prize - the voice of your choice on your voicemail. Thank you so much for playing.
SMITH: Thank you so much. This rocks.
SAGAL: Take care. It sure does. Bye-bye.
(SOUNDBITE OF BNOIS KING AND SMOKIN' JOE KUBEK SONG, "BITE ME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.