Jimmy Fallon appears to be getting smarter.
The first time the "Tonight Show" host made a bet with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel about the reading prowess of Chicago schoolchildren, he ended up swimming in Lake Michigan in winter.
This time, Fallon said on Thursday night's show, he'll just have to do his show from the city. And no matter how chilly he keeps his studio, it won't be at icy-lake levels.
"You won the bet, we will be coming to Chicago," Fallon said. "We've just got to figure out how to get everyone there... We have like 200-something people that have to go with us."
It will be the show's first visit to the city this century. Previous host Jay Leno did shows from the Rosemont Theatre in 1998 and 1996. In 2012 Conan O'Brien brought his self-titled cable show to the Chicago Theatre, the same venue he used for a week's run of his NBC show "Late Night" in 2006. David Letterman hosted shows in Chicago in 1989 and 1996.
A "Tonight" spokeswoman was not immediately able to provide further elaboration on the new visit, such as date and number of shows. It is likely, as Fallon implied on air, that producers just don't know yet what will work best.
As with the bet before last summer that led to the talk-show host participating along with the mayor in March's annual Polar Plunge fundraising event, Fallon and Emanuel bet over whether Chicago schoolkids would read a certain number of books over the summer.
This week, the mayor's office announced that 83,000 kids had read 2.7 million books through Rahm's Readers Summer Learning Challenge, organized through the public library system.
During an Emanuel "Tonight" appearance this summer, the threshhold for a Fallon Chicago appearance had been set at 2.4 million books.
If Fallon were looking to challenge the mayor's figures, he might point out that those figures come to 32.5 books per child.
Instead, he just said, "Congratulations, Chicago. You've got some smart kids."
Twitter @StevenKJohnson