Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!


CARL KASELL: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!, the NPR News quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. We're playing his week with Charlie Pierce, Faith Salie, and Alonzo Bodden. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.




TERRY ALTAPETER: Hi, this is Terry Altapeter in St. Louis.

SAGAL: Hey, how are things in St. Louis, one of my favorite cities?


SAGAL: Yeah, it gets pretty steamy down there.

ALTAPETER: Yes, it does.

SAGAL: And what do you do there?

ALTAPETER: I'm an accountant, CPA.

SAGAL: Oh, really? So I want to ask you how you feel, then, about the stereotype about the accountant, that you're dull. Do you feel that this is unfair?

ALTAPETER: Actually no.


SAGAL: So you feel that the stereotype that accounts are dull is in fact accurate?

ALTAPETER: Oddly enough, I am told I'm an exception.


SAGAL: Oh, I see. So you're saying it's true of all the other accountants.

ALTAPETER: Just about, yeah.

SAGAL: It's nice to have you with us, Terry. You're going to play our game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Carl, what is Terry's topic?

KASELL: Bus-teddd.

SAGAL: Not every crime requires the genius of a Sherlock Holmes. This week our panelists are going to read you three stories of someone inadvertently busting a crime while doing something else. Guess the real story and you'll win Detective Carl's voice on your home answering machine or voicemail, whatever you use. Ready to play?

ALTAPETER: Ready to go.

SAGAL: All right, first let's hear from Charlie Pierce.

CHARLIE PIERCE: The city council in Delavan, Wisconsin, has launched an investigation of how a police raid went completely to the dogs. On a Saturday night late in June, Office Ken Wilcox was cruising around a rural neighborhood outside of town when, while passing a large barn, he heard a cacophony of dogs barking wildly.

He immediately called into headquarters and reported that he had stumbled upon a dog-fighting ring. There have been repeated complaints of dog fights being held in the woods in and around Delavan. The town SWAT team mobilized and secured behind riot shields, burst into the barn, breaking up the 14th Annual Sally Walt Dog Show(ph) held by Delavan's local ASPCA.


PIERCE: A golden retriever in the hunting class had gotten out of control and set off some of the other contenders, which is the ruckus Wilcox had heard from the street. However, by the time everything had become clear, 17 people, including five handlers, were in handcuffs. At least three dogs had escaped entirely into the night. The baked goods table and silent auctions were in shambles, and champion Golden Earring, a Norwich terrier and last year's best in show, had been tazed into unconsciousness.


PIERCE: He's expected to recover. The community remains outraged. My dog will never be the same, said Maude Schliss(ph), the owner of Golden Earring. We used to sit together on the sofa and watch "NCIS." Now every time he hears a siren, he hides under the couch.


SAGAL: Police raid in Delavan, Wisconsin, ends up busting people for a very different reason than we thought. Your next story of a lucky break in law enforcement comes from Faith Salie.

FAITH SALIE: This week, the whole world was on royal baby watch, and security had never been tighter at the Lindo Wing of St. Mary's Hospital, where the duchess of Cambridge was set to deliver the most amazing baby human ever.


SALIE: Despite the surveillance, it was Helen Cromett(ph), a 23-year-old nurse at St. Mary's Hospital, who accidentally discovered what Scotland Yard missed, that a visiting surgeon turned out to be a sneaky journalist intent on scooping the royal birth.

The dashing Dr. Oliver Grantham(ph) was hugely popular, according to Helen. She says: At first we all loved him because he was very charismatic and even paired his scrubs with different color Csrocs each day.


SALIE: But then Nurse Cromett began to notice some strange behaviors. Dr. Grantham would use the word stat way too often. His accent would go in and out, and he'd say he was going to the vending machine to buy chips rather than crisps. Helen reports: So during a late-night shift, I started asking him about his home, and he said his family are from Yorkshire, and his sisters are called Mary, Edith and Sybil.


SALIE: I realized he was reciting plot points from "Downton Abbey."


SALIE: It turns out Dr. Grantham was a wily American blogger named Chad Lamar(ph) with a fake hospital ID, a fake accent and excellent taste in television.


SAGAL: A fake doctor gets busted when asked about his family background. Your last story of a boon of a bust comes from Alonzo Bodden.

ALONZO BODDEN: There was a time when unlucky criminals had to worry about cops seeing them or hearing them, but when cops literally smell you, your luck is just bad. A cannabis factory in Leicester, England, was sniffed out by police after they wound down their car windows to escape the smell of one officer continually breaking wind.


BODDEN: The officer with a wind problem had been on a high-protein diet after taking up bodybuilding. After a few fits of giggles and denials, they all realized a desire to eat Twinkies. That's when they noticed a cannabis smell in the air outside, and it smelled much better than the air inside the car. All three officers' suspicions were raised, and they left the car to find the cause of the cannabis smell and, of course, to breathe.

Seven people at the property in Leicester were arrested. It was a good collar, and it was all down to this officer and his flatulence, a police source said.


SAGAL: All right, so a crime was discovered this week how? Was it the police raiding something they thought was a dog fight, turned out to be a dog show, but they made arrests anyway? That was from Charlie Pierce. From Faith Salie, a fake doctor who had staked out the hospital where the royal baby was to be born being caught because he chose to pretend to be Lord Grantham? Or Alonzo Bodden's story about some cops who happened to bust a big cannabis operation just because they needed some fresh air.


ALTAPETER: I think we can rule out the dog story.

SAGAL: All right.

ALTAPETER: I'm going to go with Alonzo's story.

SAGAL: You're going to go with Alonzo's story, which is the story of the cops happening to bust the big cannabis operation because they needed some fresh air because of the diet of one of their fellow cops. That's your choice?


ALTAPETER: That's my choice.

SAGAL: Well, we spoke to someone with some expertise in the area of this story.

MARY ROACH: Farting is a survival mechanism. Farting is actually an everyday hero.


SAGAL: That was friend of the show Mary Roach. She is the author of "Gulp: Adventures On The Alimentary Canal," the really final word on farting in today's bookshelves. Pick it up if you can. Congratulations, Terry, you got it right.


SAGAL: Alonzo had the true story. You've earned a point for him, and you've won our prize. Carl Kasell will record the greeting on your home voicemail. Well done, sir.

ALTAPETER: Thank you very much.

SAGAL: That will help you stand out from the other accountants even more, having Carl on your voicemail.


ALTAPETER: We're looking forward to it.

SAGAL: Thank you so much for playing.


SAGAL: Bye-bye.








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