On this week’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, there was a three-way tie between Peter Grosz, Kyrie O’Connor and Mo Rocca at the end of the Lightning Fill-in-the-Blank round. Mo asked when was the last time there was a three-way tie. Well, looking at the statistics that I have been collecting, it was on 2008-09-27; where, Mo Rocca, Kyrie O’Connor and Tom Bodett tied with 14 points each. You’re welcome, Mo. :)
A bit over three years ago, I published the initial version of the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Statistics site. Since the site went live, I have made some changes and bug fixes over the years, but the general functionality hasn’t really changed. Another Wait Wait fan has taken some of the published statistics and ran and posted some analysis. In the post, the fan mentioned the lack of any notes on which panelist had the correct bluff and which one bluffed well enough to fool the listener, as well as displaying the points breakdown for the Lightning Fill-in-the-Blank round. I have some good news and some bad news: I have collected a good number of which panelist had the correct bluff, but not for all shows nor do have I collected which panelist’s bluff was chosen. I also have the points breakdown for …
Over the past two weeks, I have finished entering panelist and guest scores for all of the 2005 “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” shows. Also, bar graphs have been added in the “Panelist Statistics” section to show the distribution of scores for each panelist. The updates are available at the WWDTM: Show Details and Statistics page. I am now in the process of filling out show breakdown and notes for the 2005 shows. Once that I have finished with that, I will start to add information about the 2004 shows. [2007-09-12] Update: show descriptions have been entered for all but a few of the 2005 shows and I am now moving on to 2004. The basic data structures for 2003 has already been put into place, with 2000-2002 to follow in the next couple of weeks.
As previously noted, I am an avid fan of NPR’s weekly quiz show Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me! (although some may call it a mini-obsession). With that mini-obsession, I have built a database of various information and statistics about the each show, panelists and guests, and built a web page that presents the collected information and generated statistics. So far, I have entered in some information for shows since the beginning of 2005 and am continually adding more panelist and guest scores as time allows. I am also including quick summaries and notes for each show and my rating of each show (on a scale of 10, 1 being meh, not my thing and 10 being freaking rocks!!!). Feel free to peruse and submit any questions, corrections and comments to this blog post.