******* The Car Talk Puzzler Psychic Friends Network******* >From The Desk Of
Maury Maille Puzzler Tower Car Talk Plaza Hahvahd Squayah Our Fair City This Week's Puzzler: A Puzzler From The Final Frontier RAY: This is from the wonderful world of space travel. This puzzler was sent in by Dave Foster. I actually had to obfuscate a little, but here it is: In the early '60s NASA was sending electronic gear into outer space on unmanned missions. They'd already sent a guy into space but they wanted to make sure that if they were going to send people up for longer flights, that they had a chance of surviving. They were sending this electronic gear up to test a variety of things like radiation exposure, and so on. The equipment kept failing, but they couldn't figure out why. Finally, someone determined that the circuits were overheating, so they installed a fan to cool off the devices. But the problems persisted. Why? Think you know? Drop us a note via http://www.cartalk.com/email/email.html If you're right and we select your answer, we'll ship you a $26 Shameless Commerce Gift Certificate. Want to listen to Raymond obfuscate the puzzler in person? Listen anytime, at http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzler/ ************ Remember last week's puzzler? A Most Curious Array of Breakdowns RAY: James Oliver from Portland, Oregon sent this puzzler to us. I'm not going to change too much. He seems to have grasped the essence of the obfuscatory narrative. TOM: Great! All your work is done. You just read it. RAY: His introductory note says, "This is a true story." And then in parentheses he says, "Within the limits usually considered reasonable for puzzler content." He writes, "I drive a 13-year-old pickup truck, with over 220,000 miles on it. One sunny August afternoon I was cruising south on the freeway at about 75 miles per hour. After I got about five miles out of town, I saw a plume of smoke on the horizon. Traffic suddenly came to a dead stop, and a state trooper and TV news truck drove past on the shoulder. For the next several hours, I sat in stop-and-go traffic, mostly stopped, with cars just inching forward and then stopping. "The dog day sun was shining through the front windshield of my car, but a nice breeze from the west was keeping the temperature in the cab bearable. After several hours, I saw two very large SUVs on the left shoulder. Both had their hoods up. On the right shoulder I saw a moving van and a large pickup towing a boat. Both the van and the pickup had their hoods up. About 50 feet further was a fancy German sedan, an Audi I think, with its hood up. "I continued to see vehicles on the shoulders with their hoods up for the several hours, until we passed firefighters mopping up a brushfire, and traffic got back up to speed. Hours had passed by this time. I spotted the driver of the German sedan walking on the side of the road, so I asked him about his car. He told me that the engine just stopped and would not restart. He turned the key, and it was dead as a doornail. "I asked him one other question, and he answered, "Yes." It turns out that the other vehicles had the same problem. "Why did the engines stop in all these vehicles? "Here's a hint: My pickup didn't have this problem." And here's the answer: http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzler/ So, did you figure it out? Yours in weekly puzzler torment, Maury Maille Puzzler Dissemination Specialist Car Talk Plaza ******************* USEFUL INFORMATION ALERT: Tired of paying auto club dues to an outfit that lobbies against environmental causes? Check out Better World Club. It's an auto club with genuinely decent values-- unlike some others we could name... whose initials happen to be AAA. Better World Club cares about... *Your environmental interests--it gives 1% of its revenue to environmental clean up and advocacy. *Your consumer interests--it even has discounts on hybrid rental cars. *And it has the nation's only bicycle roadside assistance program. Dump your AAA membership and join Better World! If you join via the Car Talk web site, you'll even get an extra month's membership. Check out Better World Club now at http://www.cartalk.com *********************************** Got more time to kill? This past weekend's new, lousy Car Talk show is now on the web site, at http://www.cartalk.com/Radio/Show/ ******************** Help Ray lose the night sweats he's been getting, trying to come up with a decent puzzler each week. E-mail him your suggestion any time, via http://www.cartalk.com/email/email.html ******************** Puzzled out? You can unsubscribe to the Car Talk Puzzler Psychic Friends Network anytime at http://www.cartalk.com/ct/maillist.jsp?puzzler_list=subscribe#psychic We'll forgive you.
