Puzzler of the week

[Scott MacLean]

This week's puzzler:

One day last summer, I got a frantic call at the shop from a woman, who explained that she was about to leave on a cross-country trip. She was worried because something very strange was going on. I said, "Why don't you just come on in." She seemed to be a little bit out of sorts.

Here's what was happening. When she plugged her cell phone into the cigarette lighter to recharge it, she noticed that the phone wasn't getting charged up. The little charging light didn't come on. Stranger still, the warning lights, including the battery and oil lights, lit up on her dashboard. She happened to be driving a Saab, but there are a lot of cars to which this could happen. She was worried that there was something wrong with her car, and that her cell phone wasn't going to get charged because of what was wrong.

I took her cell phone and walked outside the garage. I made a call. I called the shop. One of the guys answered the phone, and I told him what was wrong with the car. A minute later, she drove away.

What did Ray tell the guy who answered the phone?

Last week's puzzler:

Imagine you have in front of you two cardboard cubes. They can be any size. You also have a magic marker.

There's nothing written on these cubes -- yet. You're going to write something on them with the magic marker. You'd like to use these cubes to represent the date.

For example, if today is the 3rd of the month, the two cubes would be next to each other and one would have a zero and the other would have a three. If it was the 22nd, it would be a two and a two.

You've got six sides on each cube, and with those six sides you need to be able to represent every single date.

Here's a hint: Think outside of the box.

How do you do it?

Last week's puzzler answer:

You've got 12 faces altogether.

So we agree that one cube has to have a zero, a one and a two and another cube, the other cube has to have a zero, a one and a two.

One of them has to have a three, but the other one does not. Because there's no 33rd of the month.

So, Cube Number One has zero, one, two, three, and Cube Number Two has zero, one, two. Now here's the problem. That is how many faces altogether? That's seven faces used up.

And then we have to put a four, a five, a six, a seven, an eight and a nine, and that's six more faces. We only have five faces left.

We need six. Can it be done? Well, yes, it can be done. Because you don't need both a six and a nine. Because you flip the six and it becomes a nine and vice versa, and so you can eliminate one of those.

_______________________
Scott MacLean
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