RAY: Now, my brother suggested this puzzler because I guess he didn't like last week's puzzler.

TOM: No. I thought last week's puzzler was awesome.

RAY: Aussies.

TOM: The only difficulty in my suggesting puzzlers is next week when you say to me do you remember the puzzler it will be extra embarrassing to say that I don't.

RAY: No, no, no. You're co-conspirator here. Catherine Imelda Ray Marcos here will be able to remember it.

TOM: No. She's given up on me.

RAY: Why.

TOM: She has been banned, she hasn't given me an answer for weeks.

RAY: Really.

TOM: Yeah. I stopped paying her off. I couldn't afford it. It was costing me ten bucks a week to get the answer.

RAY: Really. I offered her twenty and she wouldn't... I don't remember them. You do it. Go ahead.

TOM: All right. I remember it. I remember it.

RAY: It's union rules. I get a week off every 54 years.

TOM: Sure. Here you go. Everyone has heard of companies that go out of business because they were trying to make buggy whips which is a euphemism for the technology surpassed them. And all the companies --

RAY: Left in the dust so to speak.

TOM: That in fact did make buggy whips, of course, all went out of business. Not all, but 99.9% percent of them went out of business when cars came along because you didn't need buggy whips anymore. But there was a company that you wouldn't think would have gone out of business.

RAY: Really? Do tell.

TOM: I saw an ad. I was looking through a book the other day, and I saw an ad for the Scott Muffler Company which was a thriving company in 1919. The Scott Muffler Company.

RAY: And that was just about the time that cars were coming into their own.

TOM: Cars were. You would think that that company would flourish during the next decade.

RAY: That you'd think that cars and the Scott muffler would kind of dovetail so to speak.

TOM: You would think so.

RAY: Couldn't miss, right?

TOM: And yet, the Scott Muffler Company fell victim to the buggy whip syndrome and went out of business in the following decade.

RAY: No kidding.

TOM: And the question becomes how come is that?

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]