Puzzler Answer, 3/28/97: What Do These Famous Men Have In Common?

Ray: It's time for you to pry through the cobwebs of your gray matter...

Tom: You're not going to ask me about the puzzler having to do with what those three famous guys had in common? Is that what you're going to ask me about?

Ray: Well, actually Dougie and I conspired to trap you. Dougie gives us notes every week at so such and such portion of the show when we do the Puzzler and he gives us the phone number because he knows we can't remember the 800 number -- even though we've recited maybe two hundred and fifty thousand times.

Tom: You attempted to entrap me?

Ray: Yes. Because you have different notes. You have last week's Puzzler in your notes. What does it say there?

Tom: Sam's Luncheonette. You guys are hopeless. You guys are hopeless!

Ray: So now we know...it's Catherine.

Tom: Catherine gives me a signal. Look at those expressive eyes.

Ray: That's all I can see. I can just see her eyes from here. She's hiding behind the tape machine.

Tom: We communicate telepathically and you guys can never interfere with that.

Ray: All right. Well, here it is. What do the following men have in common? Ulysses S. Grant, Rudyard Kipling, Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleveland, and Calvin Coolidge. Now we know they're all dead. And they do have certainly that in common. What do they have in common other than the fact that they are all famous and that they're all dead?

Tom: I don't know.

Ray: You dont know? Well, they are best known by their middle names.

Tom: What?

Ray: Yes.

Tom: Ulysses S.? Sam?

Ray: No, no.

Tom: Ulysses is not his first name?

Ray: His real name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. He added the "S" for Simpson later on in life.

Tom: Oh.

Ray: Joseph Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Woodrow Wilson -- you knew that because that was a trivia question that you may have used on the web site at one point or another. Stephen Grover Cleveland and John Calvin Coolidge.

Tom: Wow.

Ray: Pretty good huh!?

Tom: Yea. I'm gonna change my name. Oh, I already did.

Ray: Yes.

Tom: You're Dante. I'm Dante. You haven't been calling me Dante lately? What's up?

Ray: In-vion-skinny-apolis?

Tom: Indianapolis. No, that's not my name, that's my channel.

Ray: Oh, that's your channel.

Tom: Omionospiavidos.

Ray: Who have you been channeling with?

Tom: I've been channeling with Shirley MacLaine. I tried channel surfing, but she's the only one I could find.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]