RAY: Hi. We're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us Click and Clack --

TOM: Wake me up, why don't you?

RAY: The Tappet Brothers, here with the answer to last week's puzzler. Do you remember last week's puzzler?

TOM: No. No idea whatsoever. Crusty?

RAY: No. I don't remember.

TOM: Automotive.

RAY: I'm hoping... I was hoping you'd remember.

TOM: I don't have any idea.

RAY: No. It was an automotive riddle of sorts and what I liked about this it was historic, folkloric, challenging... What do you call that?

TOM: Interesting.

RAY: Interesting and vague. A new category.

TOM: New category. Vague.

RAY: Vague is good.

TOM: I do remember that I didn't understand the question.

RAY: You didn't?

TOM: I did not.

RAY: OK.

TOM: I didn't know what you were talking about, but I knew that when you gave the answer I would say, "Oh, that's what the question was."

RAY: There you go.

TOM: So, the question itself was a puzzler.

RAY: Well, there was only... There was really only one and I'll repeat the question.

TOM: Go ahead.

RAY: What is it that we, we few -- we happy few --

TOM: We happy few, from tete to tete --

RAY: For a long time could really do with our cars?

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: OK. Got that part? And that could be --

TOM: Anything.

RAY: A lot of things.

TOM: Like drive 600 miles an hour.

RAY: Then for a while we could do it quite easily.

TOM: Uh hunh.

RAY: And no hints so far. I mean this could be again --

TOM: Anything.

RAY: Many things.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: And now we can still do it, but here's the hint. It would take us ten times longer to do it if at all and that's really the only hint that ten --

TOM: The ten.

RAY: The ten times longer.

TOM: Yeah, if we take the ten literally.

RAY: Well, it is literal. I didn't say about ten --

TOM: You said, "Ten."

RAY: I said, "Ten." It would take you ten times longer to do it.

TOM: Yeah. Um hmm.

RAY: Well, if you go back to the early days of cars the thing that you could never get your car to do was to make it to 100,000 miles and flip the odometer over from all nines to all zeros.

TOM: Oh. Uh hunh.

RAY: And then as cars improved, you will able to do that.

TOM: Sure.

RAY: But now you can't do it on most cars because they've added another digit. They've added a six-digit.

TOM: And you have to go a 1,000,000 miles.

RAY: So, you gotta go 9-9-9. You gotta go to a 1,000,000 miles and it's ten times harder to do it, therefore, then it used to be. Do we have a winner? He hates --

TOM: You're as big a jerk as I thought you were. No, I like it. Yeah.

RAY: The best part is it's vague.

TOM: Vague. Yeah, we do have a winner. It's Ray Reynolds from Renton, Washington.

RAY: Oh right. He ain't buying; he's renting.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]