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. This is a Puzzler about a traveling salesman. A guy who sells nuts and bolts. He was telling the story about when he was a salesman, like 30 years ago. He must have done something awful because for all those years, he's been assigned to the territory that includes town like Moose Jaw, Maine, and Freeze-Your-Butt, New Hampshire. Way up in the northern tier, you know?

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: Now, when he's traveling, he often finds himself looking for cheap motels, and he began to notice a disturbing trend. When he would stop at these motels, oftentimes the owner/clerk would have him fill out that little card with your name, address--you know, in case you leave in the middle of the night, they can try to track you down.

TOM: Yeah, as though if you were planning to do that, you'd put down your real name and address?

RAY: Yeah, right--exactly. Well, maybe you would by mistake, you know. Force of habit. On some of these cards, he was asked for his occupation. When he filled in "salesman," he was always assigned a room on the second floor, if there was a second floor. So I asked him, "Why do they always put salesmen on the second floor? Does it have anything to do with the kind of car you drove?" He said, "Well, at the time, I would say so." He said, "I was driving a VW." When he gave me that piece of information, I knew the answer.

TOM: So, driving a VW...

RAY: You got to look for all the little hints. It was like 30 years ago.

TOM: Thirty years ago. That would be 1969. Hippies.

RAY: He started working 30...

TOM: War.

RAY: He started working 30 years ago, and he had been working as a salesman continuously.

TOM: Right, so it's in the early '70s.

RAY: In the early '70s, OK. Yeah, there you go. Come on.

TOM: The second floor?

RAY: The second floor. He's a salesman, he drives a lot, he's concerned about getting what now? Come on. Come on, you can do it.

TOM: Gasoline!

RAY: Yeah, he's concerned about getting good what?

TOM: Mileage. Yeah?

RAY: So, he buys himself a Volkswagen. But not just any old Volkswagen. He buys himself the car that gets the best mileage. He buys himself a Volkswagen diesel. Because he's in Moose Jaw, Maine, and Freeze-Your-Butt, New Hampshire, in the wintertime, he's got to plug the thing in overnight. Otherwise, it won't start. The reason they put him on the second floor all the time is so they could see the extension cord that he had run from his motel room to his car, and they would unplug it on him in the middle of the night. So, if you were a salesperson plying your trade at that time, you often got unplugged.

TOM: That would be about the worst answer I've...I mean, that was impossible to figure out!

RAY: All the hints were there! Starting selling nuts and bolts 30 years ago. Cold part of the country.

TOM: Hints? You call those hints?

RAY: Well, I had to obfuscate and, you know?

TOM: You call those hints?

RAY: Well, I got it.

TOM: Oh, brother! That's beautiful. Even though we didn't have any winners, we had to choose.

RAY: We did have a winner this week.

TOM: Only because we chose from among all the losers.

RAY: Well, this was the guy that actually was the salesman.

TOM: That's how he did it. Oh, he's the guy who was telling the story?

RAY: The guy that told me, yeah.

TOM: He's the only one who knew the answer, and his name is Scott Kunsel. He's from Crete.

RAY: Nebraska!

TOM: Oh, Crete, Nebraska. Is he a cretin? And for having his incorrect answer chosen from among all the other incorrect answers that we got this week, Scott will get a $25 gift certificate to the Car Talk Shameless Commerce Division, with which he can get our best-selling marriage counseling tape, "Men Are from GM, Women Are from Ford," which is all the calls about couples and cars. Guaranteed to put any relationship...

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]