CECIL BALDWIN: This is NPR's ASK ME ANOTHER. I'm puzzle guru Cecil Baldwin here with guest musician Julian Velard. Now here's your host, Ophira Eisenberg.
(APPLAUSE)
OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST:
Thank you, Cecil. Before the break, we met our contestants Alissa and Emily. Our next game is a music parody. It celebrates mysteries, like the fact that this Ed Sheeran song was the top tune couples chose for their first dance at their wedding - mysterious. Let's check in with our contestants. Alissa, you also run social media for a wine and cheese shop in Brooklyn.
ALISSA FITZGERALD: I do.
EISENBERG: If you're doing like - whatever, Twitter, Instagram...
FITZGERALD: All of the socials.
EISENBERG: ...For cheese, how do you get people's attention?
FITZGERALD: One of the things I do is I write a newsletter every week, and I come up with the most inventive cheese puns that I can find scouring the Internets.
EISENBERG: OK, fantastic. Can you share one cheese pun?
FITZGERALD: So the cheese truck fell over. De-brie went everywhere.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: That's totally up my alley. So Emily, you actually used to host your own radio show at the University of Wisconsin.
EMILY MORRIS: Yeah, I sure did.
EISENBERG: Cool, what was it all about?
MORRIS: It was about dreams.
EISENBERG: Dreams?
MORRIS: Yeah, yeah. It was a morning radio show. I easily won that slot over the college students.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
MORRIS: But I had a bunch of people from my cohort on every week, and they talked about dreams they had recently.
EISENBERG: OK, so what do you learn from hearing about other people's dreams?
MORRIS: People are pretty weird but also like...
(LAUGHTER)
MORRIS: ...But also like very genuine. Like some young men on the show, they were exchange students from China. And both of them had dreams that different American basketball players were speaking Chinese to them.
EISENBERG: Yeah, and what are your dreams like?
MORRIS: I'm pretty exhausted most of the time, which is unfortunate, because then you don't dream.
EISENBERG: You don't dream as well, yeah. I do, like, returning email dreams. Seriously I don't fly or do anything fun. I return emails. OK, so your next game is a music parody game. It's called it's a mystery. This is an Ed Sheeran music parody game. And Julian Velard is the perfect person to perform because Ed Sheeran crashed on his sofa nine years ago.
JULIAN VELARD: That is 100 percent true, Ophira. And if you want to know more, I wrote a song about it called "The Night Ed Sheeran Slept On My Couch." But enough about my sofa, we rewrote the song "Thinking Out Loud" where people fall in love in mysterious ways to be about other famously mysterious things. Ring in to tell me what I'm singing about.
EISENBERG: OK, so Alissa you won the last game. You win this, and you are off to the final round. Emily, you need to win this, or you have to sleep on Julian's couch.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Julian, take it away.
VELARD: (Singing) When they put the rocks up in Salisbury place, was it so they could tell us the time? Did they build a big spaceport for some UFOs? Hey, your guess is as good as mine.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
EISENBERG: Emily.
MORRIS: Area 51.
EISENBERG: You're on the right track, but that is not the answer we were looking for. Alissa, can you steal?
FITZGERALD: Is it your couch?
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: We were looking for Stonehenge. OK, here's your next one.
VELARD: (Singing) I'm thinking about how airplanes disappear in mysterious ways especially when they fly over this. Well, me, I don't care much about three-sided shapes. Atlantic Ocean, what's going on?
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
EISENBERG: Alissa.
FITZGERALD: The Bermuda Triangle.
EISENBERG: Yes.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: Let's just keep going.
(LAUGHTER)
VELARD: (Singing) So honey, now take me into the Moai's home. Kiss me under a line of 800 heads - cool statues in Polynesia.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Anyone want to ring in with a guess.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
EISENBERG: Alissa.
FITZGERALD: Easter Island.
EISENBERG: Yes, that is correct.
(APPLAUSE)
VELARD: (Singing) I'm thinking out loud. Scottish lake thing's a plesiosaur.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
EISENBERG: Alissa.
FITZGERALD: Loch Ness.
EISENBERG: Loch Ness Monster is what we're looking for.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: Yes, not a mystery - I've seen it.
VELARD: Really?
EISENBERG: Yeah, sure.
VELARD: Just like matter of fact - yeah, yeah.
EISENBERG: I mean, open your eyes, people.
(LAUGHTER)
VELARD: (Singing) In this part of Nevada, the government's says that there's nothing to see of much worth. But I know that they captured aliens and the spacecraft that brought them to Earth.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
EISENBERG: Alissa.
FITZGERALD: Area 51.
EISENBERG: Yeah, that's right.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: Knew it was going to come back. All right, this is your last clue.
VELARD: (Singing) Because, honey, your corn is in a weird shape. It's not really. And, baby, you say you never did that. It was E.T.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Anyone?
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
EISENBERG: Alissa.
FITZGERALD: Nebraska.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: I also do not believe Nebraska exists.
VELARD: That's right - on the next unsolved mysteries.
EISENBERG: Yeah, Nebraska. Really? Really?
EISENBERG: Emily, can you steal?
MORRIS: The boy - Elliott, the boy in "E.T."
(LAUGHTER)
MORRIS: I'm really fixated on the "E.T" part of this clue.
EISENBERG: OK, right, right.
BALDWIN: Did you see that movie "Signs"?
VELARD: That movie "Signs"?
MORRIS: Joaquin Phoenix?
(LAUGHTER)
MORRIS: Have I won yet?
EISENBERG: We were looking for crop circles.
MORRIS: Oh.
EISENBERG: Yeah, I know.
MORRIS: Sure.
EISENBERG: But you were actually saying it with all those other things. I know. I know. OK, Puzzle Guru Cecil Baldwin, how did our contestants do?
BALDWIN: Congratulations, Alissa, you won both games. You're headed to the final round.
(APPLAUSE)
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