Mike Nix sent the following letter

Well, as usual you guys have managed by shear bloody minded determination to be wrong to overcome the incredible combined benefits of extraordinary education and invaluable real-life experience in the response to the Door Number 1 puzzler. (Of course, this puzzler appeared in more or less the same form in the Marylyn Vos Savant column in "Parade" magazine also, with the same erroneous solution, so you are in, for you, unusually high-level company.)

What every one who accepts or proposes the "if you switch from the first selection, you improve your odds" to one-in-two from one-in-three forgets or does not consider in saying that the odds improve if one switches is that by retaining the original choice of doors, one IS ALSO making a choice between 1 of 2 doors, but simply re-choosing the same one. SO, in considering the new situation when the bonk door is revealed, one faces a choice of two doors rather than 3 and may choose EITHER one of the two, including the one first chosen. In this way, WHICHEVER of the two is chosen, the odds are still 50/50. The contestant may very well have lucked up and in the one-in-three choice at the beginning selected the prize door.

By the way, in spite of all your remarkable efforts, Car Talk is still one of the best shows on the air and a weekly source of radio enjoyment for me and my family!! Good taste be dammed, we love you guys!

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