Laura Lippman, game show queen

So if you’ve visited Laura’s website more often than the once-a-month updates on the main page, you might find a picture of her from her senior high school days when she captained her “It’s Academic” squad, a team of keen students who competed in a game show-style competition (at my school, such an extracurricular was called “Reach for the Top” or simply “Reach.”) So Thursday evening, in what was perhaps a foray into nostalgia, she was one of the contestants on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” their weekly hour-long quiz program that features regular panelists like Charles Pierce, Roxanne Roberts and Adam Felber and hosted by Peter Sagal. WAIT, WAIT’s been travelling around the country, as it sometimes does, and this time around the show was held at Goucher College to a packed house, as the Baltimore Daily Record described in a preview article for its Thursday edition (no link online, alas):

Baltimore resident Stephanie Hack has been an avid fan of National Public Radio’s quiz program “Wait, Wait ” Don’t Tell Me” since its inception in the late 1990s.

When tickets went on sale for the show’s live taping at Goucher College in Towson, Hack was among the first of nearly 1,000 people to buy tickets.

The hour-long program hosted by Peter Sagal will be taped tonight in front of a capacity crowd. The show, which airs nationally on Saturdays at 11 a.m., will be heard on Baltimore’s WYPR 88.1 FM, which broadcasts NPR programming.

“I just love the program,” Hack said. “I can’t have my ear to the radio all week so this gives me a very entertaining review of the week’s news ” and I continue to learn about every facet of the news media; maybe even more so than just reading the newspapers.”

So how did Laura do? Well, you can find out by listening to the entire program here at your favorite NPR station. Me, I took a listen on Baltimore’s WYPR Saturday morning, and it was well worth a listen–especially as host Sagal worried that if she didn’t win her segment, he’d be killed off in her next book…