Initially Incorrect

Transcript

OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST:

Welcome back to ASK ME ANOTHER, NPR and WNYC's hour of trivia, puzzles and word games. I'm your host, Ophira Eisenberg, and with me is house musician Jonathan Coulton.

(CHEERS)

EISENBERG: Our next game is titled Initially Incorrect. Let's say hello to Ciara Powell and Robby Sandler.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: This game is about initialisms. That is something I'd like to go to our puzzle guru, John Chaneski, to give us a definition of.

JOHN CHANESKI, BYLINE: Well, initialisms are also abbreviations of phrases like acronyms, but unlike acronyms they're pronounced letter-by-letter, not as a word. So while NASA is an acronym - pronounced NASA - IBM is an intialism. It's not pronounced ibem (ph).

EISENBERG: So Robby, you're a musical theater songwriter?

ROBBY SANDLER: Indeed.

EISENBERG: Awesome. What kind of musical theater are you into?

SANDLER: Anything that leaves me thinking about it after I walk out of the theater.

EISENBERG: OK, that's an excellent response. Ciara has a pretty standard job - electrical engineer who works on high-speed cameras for military airplanes.

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: You know?

CIARA POWELL: Yeah. That's cool, right?

EISENBERG: Is your entire job classified?

POWELL: Actually, no (laughter) which is kind of scary.

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: You guys are a perfect pairing by the way.

(LAUGHTER)

EISENBERG: This is going to be excellent. Jonathan Coulton?

JONATHAN COULTON, BYLINE: So in this game, every clue is a sentence that ends with a well-known intialism, but the twist is that it's the opposite of what we're looking for. For example, if we said the paramedics reported that the accident victim was AWL, alive while leaving, the answer would be DOA, or dead on arrival.

EISENBERG: We're looking for a common initialism that is the opposite of the made-up one in the clue. And the winner will move on to our Ask Me One More final round at the end of the show. Let's give it a shot.

Oh, man, my mom just texted me WIS, weeping in silence.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: Ciara.

POWELL: I was going to say LOL (laughter) but that's totally not correct. Weeping in silence...

EISENBERG: Wait a second.

COULTON: No, you should say it.

EISENBERG: Yeah, you should just say that.

POWELL: Oh, laughing - LOL. There you go.

COULTON: That's right

EISENBERG: Yeah.

POWELL: (Laughter).

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: We were about to all weep in silence.

(LAUGHTER)

POWELL: No, it's OK.

COULTON: I really like that my new bank has an MCP, a manual customer person.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Ciara?

POWELL: ATM.

COULTON: ATM is correct - automatic teller machine.

EISENBERG: Feeling blue? You just need a little CAD, callous apathetic disregard.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: Robby?

SANDLER: Tender loving care, TLC.

EISENBERG: You are correct.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: Hey kids, let's pick up a bucket of food at TBB, Tennessee Boiled Beef.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Ciara.

POWELL: Kentucky fried chick - KFC. There you go.

COULTON: Yes, that's right (laughter).

EISENBERG: Tennessee boiled beef sounds like something they would serve in Britain as like, this is what Americans love.

(LAUGHTER)

COULTON: That's right. There is no extra crispy version of Tennessee boiled beef. It's all pretty soggy.

EISENBERG: My brother might be a little nuts. He swears he saw a DGA, a documented grounded abstraction.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: Robby.

SANDLER: Unidentified flying object, UFO.

EISENBERG: Correct.

(APPLAUSE)

COULTON: Most people don't want to hear their parents talk about their sex lives because it seems like VLS, very little speculation.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

COULTON: Ciara.

POWELL: TMI.

COULTON: That's right, too much information.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: All right - spirited fun game. I got to hand it to you both. This is your last clue. After we graduated from college, my roommate and I promised we would be WEB, worst enemies briefly.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

EISENBERG: Robby?

SANDLER: BFFs.

(APPLAUSE)

EISENBERG: Best friends forever - that is correct. Puzzle guru John Chaneski, how did our contestants do?

CHANESKI: Well, I have to say - Ciara, WTG. Way to go, you won the game.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TIME MACHINE")

INGRID MICHAELSON: (Singing) If I had a time machine, and if life was a movie scene, I'd rewind and I'd tell me, run. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.