Updates to the Wait Wait Stats Page Coming Soon

During the weekend of May 17th and 18th, I will be rolling out a few updates to the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Stats Page, on the heels of coming back from Carl Kasell’s scorekeeper finale in Washington DC. The updates to the site will include adding a new graph for each of the panelists. I won’t spill all of the details, but below is a sneak peek at what the graph would look like, without obfuscations of course.  

Going to Carl’s Last Wait Wait Taping in DC

Just a quick blog post… I am very excited, and a wee bit sad, that I will be going to Carl Kasell’s last taping of Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! in Washington DC on May 15th. The live taping will be held at the Warner Theatre at 7:30 PM Eastern Time. If any of you guys will be at the live taping and want to meet up before the show, just send a tweet to @questionlp or contact me using the site’s Contact Me form.

Minor Updates to Wait Wait Stats Page

While listening to the last Thursday’s edition of Too Beautiful To Live, Luke Burbank made a snarky remark that he hasn’t won on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! for something like 35 shows. Even though that comment was not intended to be a factual statement, it did make a light bulb flicker in my head. The panelist statistics box includes the last time that he or she last won or was tied for first place and it would take a bit of time to go through the full appearances list to count the number of shows since the panelist has won or tied for first. That afternoon, I started playing around with a couple of SQL queries to pull that information and filter out things like Best Of and repeat show appearances and got something that gave me a proper result. That night, I …

Throwback Thursday: An Interesting Look Back at the Stats Page

For this Throwback Thursday, I decided to have a bit of fun with the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Stats Page and decided to try viewing the current and old versions of the Stats Page from a view vantage points. When I was developing the three versions of the Stats Page, I never really targeted and tested it against text-based web browsers, including Lynx and W3M. Sure, I viewed the page for kicks here and there, but never took it to be a key demographic. With that said, I decided to see how the current version of the Stats Page looks like when viewed on the aforementioned text-based web browsers. In this case, W3M’s rendering engine does the Stats Page a bit more justice by properly handling table cells and spacing between each block of shows. 

Carl Kasell to retire from Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! this Spring

The news that Carl Kasell will be hanging up his Wait Wait scorekeeper’s hat this Spring hit me like a brick wall. Carl has been the scorekeeper and the magical voice of all of the winning listener contestant’s voice mail greetings ever since the show started over 16 years ago. I have had the honor to have met and chatted with Carl Kasell twice, once when Wait Wait was in Portland back in September 2011 and again in Chicago back in July 2012. In addition to getting to meet Carl Kasell twice, I also won a message recorded by Carl when I was on the show as a listener contestant. I really hope to have the chance to attend one of the celebration shows, either in Chicago or in Washington DC, to say thank you and salute Carl.

Say Hello to Wait Wait Stats Page, Version 3.0!

I’ve been waiting quite a while to say this: Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Stats Page Version 3.0 is now live and ready to use! First and foremost, one thing that you’ll notice is that the Stats Page’s address is now just http://wwdt.me. After reviewing the structure of the new Stats Page, I wanted the URL to reflect both the site design’s and the site structure’s simplicity. I have set up redirects for the old address, http://wwdt.me/stats, to point to the new address. That way, if you have any bookmarks or links to the site, the links will continue to work. Also, the Stats Page’s name has been simplified to just be, “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Stats and Show Details.” If you read the sneak peek of the new Stats Page, you will notice a few cosmetic changes that have been made. First, …