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...the answer to last week's Puzzler. And here it is.

TOM: Which I remember! I remember every word of it.

RAY: You do?

TOM: I could...

RAY: It's only a paragraph.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: This came in via e-mail, and unfortunately I lost the letter, so I don't really know who sent it, but...

TOM: But you remember the Puzzler?

RAY: Well, I do remember because I thought it was from you. And the woman that sent it in wrote, "When I was in school, one of my teachers had the annoying habit of putting little cryptic messages on the blackboard, and one day she wrote the following," the letter said. "E-I-L-N-P-U."

TOM: Yeah, get it?

RAY: "E-I-L-N-P-U. What was she trying to tell us?" And the hint I gave was that this happened near the end of the school year. E-I-L-N-P-U. I guess you didn't like the hint? I don't think. And at the end of the school year, what's often done is some kind of graduation photographs are taken, and in or that they can figure out whose picture goes with what name, they ask the kids to line up in alphabetical order. That's what E-I-L-N-P...well, it was the only hint that I could give that wouldn't have given it away.

TOM: Well, no, if you had said they were going to take a picture, that would have been a real hint!

RAY: That would have been too easy!

TOM: Ah, the idea.

RAY: In my never-ending quest to complicate and obfuscate, I felt that that was good enough.

TOM: Well, we got a winner! The winner is James Dawson from Dawson's Creek! No, from Crane, Texas, and for having your answer chosen at random from among the two correct letters that we got, James is going to get himself a $25 gift certificate to the Car Talk Shameless Commerce Division.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]