RAY: Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair and the answer to last week's Puzzler.
TOM: Let's see how many sentences you have to go through before I...
RAY: You're going to get it on the first sentence...
TOM: Go ahead.
RAY: I'm going to set the scene.
TOM: Go ahead.
RAY: The time: World War II. The place:...
TOM: Got it! Got it! Portugal! Lisbon!
RAY: Merry Olde England.
TOM: Hotbed of intrigue!
RAY: I'll give you the abbreviated version, which I couldn't do last week because you kept interrupting me!
TOM: Yeah. Go ahead.
RAY: In a secret laboratory, a small group of scientists is working on a project. They have made a discovery, something they know will greatly aid in the Allied effort against the Germans. Furthermore, this discovery will also benefit mankind for years to come, and could easily turn the tide of the war. This is heavy-duty...
TOM: This is heavy-duty...
RAY: I mean, they didn't invent stink bombs or anything--this is big stuff! Or the whoopee cushion!
TOM: It wasn't the whoopee cushion?
RAY: That was your guess, hunh?
TOM: Damn!
RAY: Included in this group is a German scientist who has recently escaped the clutches of the Nazis, and they're working on a project that had been abandoned by a Scottish scientist more than 10 years earlier. So now, finally, after many disappointments, they have success. One of them cries out, "Eureka!" Or whatever the version of 'Eureka' is...
TOM: And the German says, "Same to you, pal!"
RAY: Anyway, they know they've got something big here, and they apply for a grant from the British government. To their amazement and great disappointment, the grant comes through for 50 pounds.
TOM: Brits!
RAY: These guys say, "Fifty pounds!"
TOM: Can't even have breakfast for 50 pounds!
RAY: Come on! The only way we can get this thing into the war effort is to go to America and try our luck there. So they leave England, but leaving England and going to the U.S. is dangerous with German U-boats patrolling the North Atlantic.
TOM: I remember it well!
RAY: So, in order to make their way safely, they decide to sail under the flag of a neutral country.
TOM: Switzerland.
RAY: Portugal. Switzerland doesn't sail.
TOM: They don't have an ocean?
RAY: They don't have an ocean.
TOM: They don't have an armada? The Swiss armada?
RAY: So they make their way to Lisbon, and from there they plan to...
TOM: A hotbed! I want to get to the hotbed...
RAY: ...To disembark to America. Now, of course, Lisbon is a hotbed...
TOM: It's a hotbed.
RAY: ...of spies, counterinsurgents, insurgents·
TOM: And buckle [???] peddlers!
RAY: Saboteurs, and they know that if their discovery gets into the wrong hands, there could be dire consequences. So they need to hide it. So they take their discovery--ready for this?--and they hide it on their clothing.
TOM: On their clothing, Jerry!
RAY: And with the discovery hidden on their clothing, they make their way to America. And the rest is history.
TOM: I got it! They invented the boutonniere! Now, how did that benefit mankind? Think about all the proms that you have gone to bare-chested!
RAY: That's right.
TOM: Wow! The boutonniere, hunh? Am I right?
RAY: Close!
TOM: Well, it wasn't the whoopee cushion.
RAY: Well, what they discovered was, they discovered something that aided the war effort, and they knew, as most military students knew, that the greatest cause of fatalities in warfare is not the actual gunshot wound, but it's the ensuing infection. In fact, most people die on the battlefield because they get a minor wound but a major infection, and the infection kills them.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: And the work they took up had been started in the '20s by a Scotsman named Alexander Fleming, I believe.
TOM: How well we know him!
RAY: And what he had discovered by accident was penicillin. But he could never do anything with it because he couldn't develop a strain of it that was reproducible. But these guys had, and when they had the penicillin mold, rather than carrying it in little petri dishes, they decided that if they were apprehended by Nazis...
TOM: They rubbed it on their clothes.
RAY: They had it on their clothes so that when they got to America, they could do a little scraping. And that's in fact what they did, and, of course, it saved many lives. It allowed soldiers who got wounded to go back in and get killed.
TOM: Now, wait a minute. If they were going to do that...
RAY: Yes.
TOM: And rub it on their clothes, it was going to smell bad, probably. Why didn't they...
RAY: Scientists always smell bad.
TOM: But why didn't they go through France? Then no one would have noticed!
RAY: They would have, but France, unfortunately, was not a neutral country.
TOM: Was occupied at the time.
RAY: [???] would be a first choice.
TOM: OK. Is that it?
RAY: But the hint I had given last week was chicken soup, which everyone knows is Jewish penicillin.
TOM: Oh! Of course! I didn't get that hint.
RAY: Well, I knew you didn't, because you didn't get anything! You didn't remember anything!
TOM: Whoopee cushion and the boutonniere were my two guesses.
RAY: Do we have a winner at least?
TOM: We do, wow! Yeah. Get this, the winner is--what a coincidence!--the winner is Malaise Lindenfeld.
RAY: No kidding?
TOM: Malaise!
RAY: How apropos!
TOM: What a strange name! She's from Coconut Grove, Florida, and for having her correct answer chosen, Malaise is going to get a $25 gift certificate to Car Talk's...
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
