Oct 30, 2006
RAY: The essence of this puzzler was sent in by someone named John Knight, but I had to monkey around with it a little bit.
We needed a new sign above our garage and Tommy decided to hire a sign painter for the job, instead of turning Crusty loose with a can of spray paint, like the last time.
He instructed the sign painter to paint a sign which simply said, 'Click and Clack's Garage.' Those four words.
When it was finally finished and hung in place, Tommy stood there and carefully studied the new sign. After several minutes he spoke: 'I don't like it. Something's not right.'
'What's wrong?' asked the sign painter. 'Did I misspell something or use improper punctuation?'
'No, it's nothing like that.'
Tommy then uttered a sentence in which he used one of the words on that sign five times in a row. There were other words in that sentence, but one of the words in that sign was used five times in a row. And here's the interesting part: the sentence made sense and, furthermore, it explained what was wrong with that sign.
And the question very simply is, what's the sentence?
We needed a new sign above our garage and Tommy decided to hire a sign painter for the job, instead of turning Crusty loose with a can of spray paint, like the last time.
He instructed the sign painter to paint a sign which simply said, 'Click and Clack's Garage.' Those four words.
When it was finally finished and hung in place, Tommy stood there and carefully studied the new sign. After several minutes he spoke: 'I don't like it. Something's not right.'
'What's wrong?' asked the sign painter. 'Did I misspell something or use improper punctuation?'
'No, it's nothing like that.'
Tommy then uttered a sentence in which he used one of the words on that sign five times in a row. There were other words in that sentence, but one of the words in that sign was used five times in a row. And here's the interesting part: the sentence made sense and, furthermore, it explained what was wrong with that sign.
And the question very simply is, what's the sentence?
Answer:
RAY: You looked at the sign and said, "The spaces between Click and and and and and Clack aren't equal."
TOM: Very good!
RAY: Now I'm sure there are plenty of other sentences in which you could use the word and five times in a row, but that's the one that I came up with. "The spaces between Click and and and and and Clack aren't equal." Do we have a winner?
TOM: We do. The winner this week is Denise Desault from Cambridge, our fair city, Massachusetts, and for having her answer selected at random from among all the correct answers that we got, two, Denise gets a 26-dollar gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at cartalk.com, with which she can get our new collection of funny stories we've told on the air over the years, called Once Upon a Car Fire.
TOM: And if there was a theme for these stories, something that tied them together somehow, what would you say that theme is?
RAY: They're funny?
TOM: Well, yeah.
RAY: Usually at someone else's expense?
TOM: Yeah, whose?
RAY: Oh, yours.
TOM: Very good!
RAY: Now I'm sure there are plenty of other sentences in which you could use the word and five times in a row, but that's the one that I came up with. "The spaces between Click and and and and and Clack aren't equal." Do we have a winner?
TOM: We do. The winner this week is Denise Desault from Cambridge, our fair city, Massachusetts, and for having her answer selected at random from among all the correct answers that we got, two, Denise gets a 26-dollar gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at cartalk.com, with which she can get our new collection of funny stories we've told on the air over the years, called Once Upon a Car Fire.
TOM: And if there was a theme for these stories, something that tied them together somehow, what would you say that theme is?
RAY: They're funny?
TOM: Well, yeah.
RAY: Usually at someone else's expense?
TOM: Yeah, whose?
RAY: Oh, yours.
