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: Yeah, good one.
RAY: ?? to mention it, but this was part of my house number series. Is it a series ??
TOM: No.
RAY: Anyway, here it is. There may be a third. You never know. A man was waiting in line at a hardware store to buy the letters that would spell the number of his house. Right? Instead of the number one, you're going to buy O-N-E.
TOM: O-N-E. I get it, I get it.
RAY: As luck would have it, there were three guys ahead of him in line all waiting to do the same thing.
TOM: Hmm. What are the chances of that?
RAY: Pretty, pretty bad. The first guy buys the number one, O-N-E, and he pays two bucks.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: The next guy buys the number two, T-W-O, and he pays three bucks. The third guy buys the number 11. He pays five bucks. Our protagonist in this little drama is buying the number 12. What does he pay?
TOM: Let's see. If he beats up the first two guys, he can have the T and the E and he'll only have to buy, oh, 12. The T and the W --
RAY: Don't you notice --
TOM: -- and the E, oh.
RAY: All the letters in 12 are in the first three --
TOM: I was just thinking he'd only have to buy three letters.
RAY: Well, in fact, let's look at the word 12. Let's look at it. OK, and then let's look at --
TOM: He's got to buy all of them.
RAY: And then let's look at the word 11.
TOM: Eleven.
RAY: They share four letters.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: E-L-E-V.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: OK? So if you take that away from the 12, you get T-W left over.
TOM: T-W and --
RAY: If you take those same four letters away from 11, you have N-E left over. Now, let's go back to the first two guys.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: One cost two dollars, and two cost three dollars. What have we learned? Now we don't know the cost of any of the letters individually.
TOM: No, we don't, but we do know --
RAY: But we do know that a T and a W costs a dollar more than an N and an E.
TOM: Yeah. We do know that. I do know that. I see it right here.
RAY: We do know that. And as luck would have it, the T and W in 12 are going to cost a dollar more than the N and the E in 11. We know the whole of 11 costs five bucks, so 12 must cost six bucks. Pretty good. Huh?
TOM: Wow.
RAY: And you could use higher mathematics to solve this.
TOM: Well, I was writing a series of simultaneous equations.
RAY: You could do that.
TOM: Could I?
RAY: No.
TOM: Will I be able to play the piano?
RAY: My wife broke her finger recently. It was a little industrial accident, and whilst we were at the hospital waiting endlessly, I decided I had to ask the doctor when it was all over if she would be able to play the violin. And he was a young guy. I figured he'd go for it. He didn't.
TOM: He didn't go for it?
RAY: No. He said could she play the violin before? I told him he ruined my whole day. Anyway, who is our winner?
TOM: The winner this week is Meg Schneider from Boise, Idaho. And for having her answer selected at random from the freezer bag full of correct answers that we got, Meg was going to get a $25 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at the Car Talk section of Cars.com. Now, isn't that exciting? And with that $25 gift certificate, Meg, you can get a copy of our great new music CD, "Car Talk Car Tunes: The Car Talk Compendium of Disrespectful Car Songs." What a deal.
RAY: Still pushing that CD, huh?
TOM: Oh, yeah, every chance I get.
RAY: Hey, by the way, I'm in love with Adie Gray.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: She sings, on this CD, she sings a song called "Grandpa's Advice."
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: They're all jerks. [I know it?]. Hey, we have to play a cut from this later on in the show. Anyway, we'll have a brand new Puzzler coming up in the third half of the show today. So, stay tuned for that. In the meantime, if you desperately need some car advice, give us a call. Our number is 888-CAR TALK. That's 888 double two, 78, 255. Hello, you're on Car Talk.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
