Puzzler of the week

[Scott MacLean]

This week's puzzler:

To get home from the garage, I wind my way through the back streets of Our Fair City, going through various neighborhoods, some of which have industrial buildings, little factories, warehouses or office buildings.

There's one building I pass every day that makes me chuckle.  This building bears the name of the enterprise contained within its walls. I laugh because its name seems so incongruous with the building. There are many other buildings just like this one. And, as a matter of fact, if you went into this building to ask for a demonstration of the product they sell, they wouldn't be able to give you one. However, if they took you to a building a few doors down, they could easily give you a demonstration of the product that they sell.

Here's a hint: each and every one of us has used the product that they sell.

What do they make in the building?

Last week's puzzler:

Flashback to summer 1942. The British are battling the Germans and Italians for control of North Africa. In one of the towns under British control is an Italian civilian named Tony Cardiello. Tony refuses to submit to the British demand that they use his trucking company to transport supplies. Always willing to negotiate, the British confiscate the trucks and throw Tony into a concentration camp.

Move ahead now to the late '70s. I was out of college, doing the only thing that a political science grad could do to earn a living: driving a truck. It was a cold winter in 1978 with many mornings at minus 20. In those conditions, diesel engines just didn't want to start.

As it turns out, Tony Cardiello was the morning mechanic for this trucking company. Tony taught us that if a truck wouldn't start, we should leave enough juice for him to give it a second try.

His first question for us was always the same: "Did you bless the truck?" We said, "No, we didn't bless the stinkin' truck." Upon hearing that, Tony would walk over to the stubborn truck, face the bulldog ornament on the hood and make the sign of the cross. Then he'd say, "Start the truck!"

Nine out of 10 times the truck would start.

How'd Tony do it?

Last week's puzzler answer:

So the X factor here is time. A diesel engine requires or relies on the heat of compression to combust the fuel. So when it's minus 20, and you get out there and you turn the starter and it goes, you're compressing that ice-cold air, but not getting it hot enough to start the engine because it won't get the air temperature of that compressed air up to the ignition point of the fuel. And when these guys ran off to find Tony, time went by. And the friction that was inherent, and the pistons going up and down in the cylinders, had enough time to expand the pistons and the rings enough so that on the second try the compression would be just enough so the thing would fire up.

_______________________
Scott MacLean
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