Weekend Edition Sunday

On-Air Challenge: Identify the objects described in a series of riddles from A New Collection of Riddles by Jesse Cochran.

Last Week's Challenge From Listener Sandy Weisz: Name something that is part of a group of 12. Change the first letter to the next letter of the alphabet to name something that is part of a group of nine. What are these things?

Answer: "Cancer" is one of the 12 astrological signs, and "Dancer" is one of Santa Claus' nine reindeer, including Rudolph.

If you're going to make a film about cutthroat competition, you can make it about baseball or football or robot boxing, or you can be really brave and make it about high-end birdwatching.

That's the topic of The Big Year, which opens this weekend and stars Steve Martin, Owen Wilson and Jack Black as three men competing to see the most bird species in a year. They call that a "big year" in birding circles, in case you don't travel in them typically.

Ben Lee turned 33 this year, but he's been making music for more than half his life. Lee was just 14 when his band Noise Addict was signed by The Beastie Boys' label; after that, his high-school years were a balance between final exams and touring with the group.

The song that made pianist Roger Williams famous was "Autumn Leaves." It was No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart for four weeks in 1955, the only piano instrumental in history to reach that spot. Host Audie Cornish has a remembrance of Williams, who died on Saturday.

The White House receives some 20,000 letters and emails a day, and occasionally citizens are surprised by a personal response to their missives. Host Audie Cornish speaks with Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow, who writes about this correspondence in his book Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President.