NPR listeners and fans in the Bi-Co gathered this Friday night November 4th at Haverford’s Marshall Auditorium for the first collegiate taping of the popular trivia game show Ask Me Another. The show was hosted by NPR’s Ophira Eisenberg, Jonathon Coulton, and Art Chung and featured four Haverford student contestants, with guest appearances by Eugene Mirman of Bob’s Burgers and the inventor of the Choco Taco Alan Drazen. This event was brought to Haverford College by the Haverford Speakers Committee and was free and open to the public.
The show started with Ophira introducing herself to the audience in a radio-style talk show host voice. Ophira described herself as a Canadian with an unpopular Jewish name who went to McGill to study theater and cultural anthropology and then ended up in New York City. 
She then introduced her co-hosts. Jonathan Coulton is the one-man band of the show who plays guitar and sings and formerly was a computer programmer. Art Chung is a producer on the show and keeps track of the score and rules of the show. One of the hosts would ask the trivia questions to two contestants at a time, who compete by pressing a buzzer and answering the puzzle correctly. The winners of the first round advance to the final round.
The game show promptly started with Haverford contestant introductions and the first trivia competition. The first topic was a cereal word puzzles game between the first two Haverford contests: a sophomore Math major and a junior pre-med English major. Art Chung would read out a riddle about a type of cereal, modifying just one letter of the cereal name to make the name punny. Here are the answers from the first round:
- Captain Brunch
- Lucky Charts
- Raisin Bras
- Frosted Flames
- Apple Jocks
- Fruit Poops
- Bookie Crisp
- Money Nut Cheerios (Bees like this o-shaped cereal that tastes like dolla dolla bills y’all)
For the next round, Ophira gave the contestants a name of an animals, and the contestants would have to decide whether it was a muppet, a beanie baby, or a college sports mascot. Notable mention to Mario the Magnificent, our neighbor school Drexel University’s mascot.
The final round for the first two contestants was a free for all where they are given a category and must name within that category without repeating or hesitating. The topic was to name the top 10 languages spoken in the US. The two contestants managed to name 6 from the top 10, missing Korean, Russian, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.
The next part of the show was for Jonathan and Ophira to guess why a mystery guest is famous. They were allowed to ask yes/no questions until they could guess why the mystery guess was famous. This show’s mystery guest happened to be Alan Drazen, the inventor of the Choco Taco.
After, it was time for the next two contestants to compete. Their trivia competition was a music parody game where they had to name things they could find near the ocean based on an altered version of Cake By The Ocean by DNCE performed by Jonathan. Answers to this section are listed bellow:
- Flip flops
- Bikini
- Sandcastle
- Volleyball
- Lifeguard
- Oil tankers/oil spill
- Jellyfish
- Message in a bottle
The next competition was to name that celebrity that earned an honorary degree based on listening to a recording of that celebrity’s acceptance speech. The answers were:
- Ben Affleck, Brown Doctorate in Fine Arts, revoked
- Jane Lynch, Smith
- Bill Gates, Harvard Doctor of Laws
- Laverne Cox,The New School, revoked
- Oprah Winfrey, Harvard
- Steven Colbert, Northwestern (had an incomplete class 25 years ago)
- Dolly Parton, University of Texas – Nocksville
After the other two Haverford contestants finished their first round, Eugene Mirman of Bob’s Burgers was invited to the stage to name a punny burger. He also talked about his comedian career touring with music bands and other comedians. Before he named the burgers, he joked that they would all be puns on the names of cities or a Jewish person’s name. Some of the burgers were:
- Iceburger
- AndySamburger
- Jarsburger
- Ginsburger
Unfortunately, I could not stay for the final round because I had to head back to Bryn Mawr for a dance rehearsal, but I got quite a few laughs out of the portion that I was able to attend. My roommate also happens to be a huge NPR fan and also enjoyed the show.