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The Puzzler

Puzzler Answer, 11/7/97: Dreaming of Guillotines

RAY: Tommy, do you remember last week's puzzler?

TOM: Yes, I do. I'm sitting in church. I'm thinking about the French Revolution.

RAY: Wow.

TOM: And I'm having a dream.

RAY: So CO has no adverse affect on memory.

TOM: None, whatsoever. I'm having a dream. There was a great puzzler by the way. It can't be that great, because I got it just like that. I mean as you said, I said boom, and I knew the answer.

RAY: My body language must have given it away, huh?

TOM: Yeah, it's good.

RAY: Here it is. It was a long, hot summer Sunday service. This old geezer, who was sitting with his wife, happens to nod off during the sermon as old geezers are won't to do. I mean he's -- even be young geezers nod off. He dreams he is one of the leaders of the French Revolution, and he is brought to the guillotine to be executed by probably Marie Antoinette herself, who is going to pull the lever. So just as he dreams that the blade is falling, his wife happens to notice that he's asleep. She taps him on the back of the neck with her fan.

TOM: Oooh!

RAY: Thirty-six inch Casablanca ceiling fan -- to wake him up. The shock of thinking that the blade has arrived to lop off his head makes him have a heart attack, and he dies on the spot.

TOM: Whew, wow.

RAY: The question very simply was what's wrong with this story.

TOM: Well, Marie Antoinette never even knew how to operate a guillotine.

RAY: OK, well, that wasn't in the original statement of the puzzler so that's out.

TOM: Oh was it. Well, I know the answer. The answer is if he died, how do you know what he was dreaming?

RAY: Bingo, there you go.

TOM: That's it.

RAY: Do we have a winner?

TOM: Yeah, we do.

RAY: And who is our winner, more importantly?

TOM: The winner is Jeremy Crock from Glendale, Missouri, and he sent us his answer on the back of an 8-track tape, which I have right in front of me here. The tape is called Greatest Hits of 1965. Thank you Jeremy. I will enjoy listening to this in the Dart. I wish I had an 8-track player in the Dart.

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