Radio show 'Says You!' comes to the BCT

Richard Sher stood between the audience and the panelists. 

“It is wonderful to be back,” he said, referencing his return to Bloomington. “We are just about set to play, but we have one more thing to do. This is a great new room. We know we have the sound mic, but this needs to sound happy, good and fun.”

Scher is the host and creator of “Says You!,” a radio game show he has played host to for the last 18 years.

“Says You!” travels the country challenging panelists and audiences with “quips and quibbles” concerning word games and brain bogglers. Tickets for the show sold out last Saturday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.

Cheers and applause roared for contributors to the show, the audience, the panelists and Sher.

Award-winning quartets from the Jacobs School of Music played both shows.

The Kenari Saxophone quartet played Saturday’s show, and Wasmuth String Quartet played Sunday’s show.

Both groups played intros and interludes, which allowed panelists to ponder their answers.

An encore show was presented Sunday in the music school.

The show places an emphasis on humor and though teams are scored, there is no dishonor in losing.

Panelists joke with each other as they play the game.

The game is divided into rounds. The first round is called “definition and derivation,” wherein the panelists, who are broken into two teams, try to define words or phrases.

One question was, “Where does the phrase ‘end of the rope’ come from?” The correct answer turned out to be when a horse was tethered, it would eat all the grass in the circular vicinity of its confinement, and therefore be at “the end of the rope,” trying to reach grass to eat.  

Other rounds were called “bluff rounds.” In a bluff round, a word is given to the panelists, and one team makes up three different definitions for the word. Only one definition is correct.

The team that tried to deceive its opponents defined the word “nibby” as either being a toothless cat, a person who sticks themselves places they should not be and a cloth-covered, Victorian candy given to children and elderly people.

A “nosy, over-inquisitive, interfering” person was the correct answer.

Stanley Rarick, a Bloomington resident and fan of the show, said the show generally keeps the same panelists and occasionally uses guest members.

Panelists all have media-related jobs and are familiar with each other.

“You hear these people on the radio and you think, ‘You wouldn’t want to see that person,’ but they’re great.”

Guest panelist Miah Michaelsen appeared for the show Sunday. She is Bloomington’s assistant economic director for the arts.

She said she was elated to be on “Says You!” in the program brochure because it is better than folding laundry for her husband and two sons.

Rarick said he saw the show at the Buskirk-Chumley and in the music school.

The show in the music school concluded with the audience and cast singing “(Back Home Again in) Indiana.”

Sher said the show would most likely be aired in late May or early June.