Tire Mounting... With But a Few Letters

RAY: I'm going to have winter tires put on my car. I bought four of them. I'm moving soon, and since I'll be taking the car to a different shop to have them changed back next spring, the tires have to be marked so they can be put back where they belong, i.e., where they came from. So the left front has to go the left front, the right front has to go there, and so on.
When I take them off, I'm going to ask the people at the gas station to mark them with letters.
The question is, what's the smallest number of letters needed to mark my tires to guarantee that all four of them can get correctly installed with no chance of error or ambiguity in the spring?


Remember last week's puzzler?
How Does Pork Chop Boy Drive To Work?
RAY: The inspiration for this puzzler was sent in by Warner Grenady. Of course, I had to add some obfuscatory details, and I personalized it a little bit.

Some of you might remember our nephew Matt, whom we called "Pork Chop Boy," because his social life was so bad, he had to tie a pork chop around his neck even to get the dog to play with him.

Anyway, some years ago he dislocated his right shoulder playing chess. It was "strip chess" actually, but, we don't have to go into that. His shoulder hurt so much that he couldn't move the shifter on his automatic transmission. He tried to reach over and shift with the other hand, but twisting in the seat hurt even more.

But, Pork Chop Boy needed to drive to work every day, and he didn't have any way to get there. Tommy said, "No problem. You can use my car." He did, and he had no problem driving Tommy's car to work-- yet, he couldn't shift his own automatic transmission car.

The question is, which one of Tommy's jalopies did Matt use to get to work, and why?

Order Up!
RAY: This is for the kids out on summer school vacation so they can keep their little brains sharp. I didn't want to make it too difficult because, after all, summer is a time to renew, regenerate, relax, relearn, relate and all those "re-" things. This came from Lou Gottlieb.
Everyone knows what an omelet is, right? An omelet is made with scrambled eggs that are only scrambled in the bowl and not scrambled in the pan. An omelet is folded over.
I was at a restaurant the other day, and there was a sign that said, "All of our omelets were made with three eggs." And I looked at the menu and realized that there was maybe a puzzler here.
The first three omelets were cheese omelets: 7-dollars-45-cents; Bacon omelet: 7-dollars-70-cents.
Bacon and cheese omelet: 8-dollars-45-cents.
The question is: what's the plain omelet cost? (Just the eggs, no bacon, no cheese).

Fixing Ray's Lousy Math
RAY: This puzzler is mathematical -- and it's also nice, easy and short. Get out a pencil and write down the following equation: 76 = 24. It's obviously incorrect.
Now, I want you to correct this equation so that it makes sense, by moving the four digits around. You got four digits here, 7, 6, 2, and 4, but you can't introduce any new signs -- plus sign, minus, division, so on. You got an equal sign and that's it. Imagine that the four digits are written on four slips of paper. Do what you want with them and make the equation make sense.

Tom, Ray and Doug Paint Car Talk Plaza
RAY: Tommy, Dougie and I are sitting around the office one day at Car Talk Plaza. We were noticing how dingy the place looked. We'd been there 15 years, and the place had never been painted. So, we decided to paint Car Talk Plaza.
We didn't know which team of us was going to do it, so we sat down and decided to do a little math. We determined that Tommy and I together could paint the entire Car Talk Plaza in 10 days. After all, we had a lot of painting experience as kids, having painted Dad's car a couple of times with brushes.
Dougie and I could do it in 15 days. And, if Doug and Tom worked together, they could do it in 30 days.
The question is how long would it take each of us, painting by ourselves, to paint the whole of Car Talk Plaza?

The Stupid Puzzler Was No Laughing Matter
RAY: Here's a list of words. What do they have in common?
"Deft," as in he made a deft move. "First," he came in first. "Calmness," he was overcome by calmness. "Canopy," a canopy covered the boat so he wouldn't get wet. "Laughing," it was no laughing matter. "Stupid," needs no further explanation. "Crab cake," as in, "My brother made me crab cakes for dinner and I ate a bottle of antacid when I got home." And "hijack," I was hoping that our producer's flight would be hijacked to Bora Bora.
The question is, what do these words have in common?

What Do These Famous People Have in Common?
RAY: What do the following men have in common?
TOM: Who are they?
RAY: Get your pencil and write this down. Last week's puzzler required a pencil and so does this one. Ulysses S. Grant, Rudyard Kipling, Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleveland, and Calvin Coolidge. Now, I know they're dead.
TOM: I got it! They were all Presidents of the United States.
RAY: Close. Except for that Wilson guy.
Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?
Porch Potatoes
RAY: Potatoes are 99 percent water and one percent what? Potato. So say you take a bunch of potatoes, like 100 pounds of potatoes and you set them out on your back porch to dry out.
TOM: Yeah, when they are dry they should weigh about a pound.
RAY: Well, we’re not drying out completely. And as the potatoes dry out the water begins to evaporate. And after a while, enough water has evaporated so that they are now 98 percent water. If you were to weigh those potatoes at that moment...
TOM: They'd be lighter.
RAY: Yes, how much lighter? That's the question. Now you can solve this puzzler algebraically, and if you don't solve it algebraically, you are going to get the wrong answer.
TOM: Really?
RAY: Wait - what's your answer, off the top of your head?
TOM: 99 pounds.
RAY: You are wrong.

The Chicken Nugget Conundrum
This puzzler was sent in by a fellow named Louis Gee. Here it is:

There's a famous fast-food restaurant you can go to, where you can order chicken nuggets. They come in boxes of various sizes. You can only buy them in a box of 6, a box of 9, or a box of 20. So if you're really hungry you can buy 20, if you're moderately hungry you can buy 9, and if there's more than one of you, maybe you buy 20 and you divide them up.

Using these order sizes, you can order, for example, 32 pieces of chicken if you wanted. You'd order a box of 20 and two boxes of 6.

Here's the question:

What is the largest number of chicken pieces that you cannot order? For example, if you wanted, say 37 of them, could you get 37? No. Is there a larger number of chicken nuggets that you cannot get? And if there is, what number is it?

SORRY FOLKS, FOR SOME REASON I DIDN'T GET THE PUZZLER LAST MONDAY SO I HAD TO GO TO THEIR SITE. I HAVE NO IDEA IF THIS IS THE RIGHT ONE.:o)

RAY: A friend of ours who runs, for lack of a better term, a small business in our fair city -- he's a loan shark actually -- came across this word some years ago and sent it to Tom, thinking it might be a good puzzler. Tom obviously lost it. But he also sent it to Alan Feldman, who recently sent it to me!

Here it is:

Give me a word with three, consecutive double letters. I'll give you a couple of words that almost qualify, but don't. For example, the word committee, c-o-m-m-i-t-t-e-e. It would be great except for the i that sneaks in there. Or Mississippi -- M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i. If you could take out those i's it would work. But there is a word that has three consecutive pairs of letters and to the best of my knowledge this may be the only word. Of course there are probably 500 more but I can only think of one. What is the word?

Hunt for the Lone Stick Shift
RAY: This puzzler was sent in by Ben Hayes, and he says it's a true story. Well, it probably was until I monkeyed around with it. So it's based on a true story.

I was in the market for a new car a few years ago and I decided early one Saturday morning to go do it. I wanted a Toyota Corolla, and who wouldn't, considering their stellar reputation and all that. So with that in mind I headed for the biggest, baddest Toyota dealership in the county. I figured they'd have the best selection and probably the best prices too, right? So I pulled up to the dealership in my clunker and the salesman, sensing an easy sale, met me in the parking lot. In fact he practically tripped over himself to get to me. And while he was pumping my hand vigorously, I told him I wanted a new Corolla with AC and power steering; the color didn't really matter, but I wanted manual transmission.

"You do?"

"Yeah, yeah, I do."

"Sheesh, we don't sell manuals at all. Practically all the cars we sell are automatics. We may have one or two on the lot. But -" and I sensed he was trying to get rid of me - "but our computer system is down this morning and the only way to find one is to go out into the lot and walk up and down the rows."

So I said, "Let's go for it!"

Well, I couldn't believe how many Corollas they had. Together we walked down a long row of Corollas. When we looked to the left there was a sea of rear bumpers and tailpipes. And when we looked to the right, more Corollas, these showing off their headlights and grilles. While I leisurely walked between these two rows of cars, the salesman bounced from one to another, looking in the windows to see what kind of shifter each car had.

And he tried to do it pretty efficiently, in that he would stand between two cars and he would look into the driver's window of one car and he'd look in the passenger window of the other car, so he was killing two birds with one stone. And then he'd run in front of me and run to the cars parked on my right. And he'd do the same thing, back and forth, back and forth. I, on the other hand, never got closer than 15 feet to any of these cars. And from my vantage point, there was absolutely no way I could possibly see into any of them. Yet at one point I said, "Oh, there's a stick shift."

The salesman walked up to it and said, "You're right! How did you know that?"

And the question is, how did I know that?
Answer the Puzzler »


Remember last week's puzzler?
Seeing Double
RAY: A friend of ours who runs, for lack of a better term, a small business in our fair city -- he's a loan shark actually -- came across this word some years ago and sent it to Tom, thinking it might be a good puzzler. Tom obviously lost it. But he also sent it to Alan Feldman, who recently sent it to me!

Here it is:

Give me a word with three, consecutive double letters. I'll give you a couple of words that almost qualify, but don't. For example, the word committee, c-o-m-m-i-t-t-e-e. It would be great except for the i that sneaks in there. Or Mississippi -- M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i. If you could take out those i's it would work. But there is a word that has three consecutive pairs of letters and to the best of my knowledge this may be the only word. Of course there are probably 500 more but I can only think of one. What is the word?

I AM NOT SURE WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE SEQUENCE OF THESE BEING POSTED BY THE COMPANY??

Lost Wages in Vegas
RAY: This is from my Lost Wages series and it was sent in by Katherine Curtis. She writes:
A man is visiting Las Vegas, known for gambling casinos and the like, and he falls for the local hype and heads for a casino with hopes of hitting it big.
He goes into this unusual casino that charges a dollar to enter, as well as a dollar to leave. He pays his dollar, plays the slot machines, loses half his money and in disgust pays his one dollar and leaves.

The following day he knows he'll do better. He takes the money he has left and heads out to the same casino. He pays his buck, but just like before, he again loses half his money, and pays another dollar to leave.

On the third day he figures he'll give it one more shot but his money is dwindling fast. The same thing happens. After paying his one dollar entrance, he loses half his money, and then pays his last dollar to get out. He's flat broke when he leaves.

So the question is: How much money did he start with?