Nov 01, 2022
We have a very interesting puzzler ready for this week. Much better than last week, I promise!
This puzzler involves our trusted producer, Dougie.
This is something that happened a long time ago, so I'm going to
try to remember all the facts correctly.
Okay, here goes.
It was a hot and muggy night. Dougie is in a major, major city someplace. I think the city was Los Angeles. He was out there on some public radio shindig that he'd gotten free tickets to or something.
I'm even gonna give you the date. It was August 17th, 1992. So, this was a long, long time ago. It was around 10 o'clock at night, and Doug is heading east on route 10. He was about 50 miles outside of LA driving his old 1978 Cutlass Salon. Great car!
He's driving along and he passes a car stopped by the side of the road, this car just kind of pulled over. The driver's sitting in the car. The poor guy had broken down. What does Dougie do? He blows right by him and doesn't even slow down.
Over the next several miles, he sees several more cars and they're all stopped by the side of the road. And the people are just sitting in their cars. Now, he's thinking, if one of these people had trouble with their car, you would think that they would get out and open the hood and you look under there. You know, to see if there's something wrong with the engine. That's what you do when you're broken down on the side of the road. But none of them had done this. They are all pulled over to the side of the road and were sitting there in the car, transfixed somehow just staring out into space like some alien tractor beam had to pull them over to the side of the road.
It was a hot, muggy night, August 17, 1992 in the city of Los Angeles, California. Over the next five miles, he sees like 10 more cars stopped at the side of the road. And none of the drivers of those cars are looking under the hood or changing tires or anything like that.
And he noticed that none of the passengers were talking. Nobody in the car was talking to anyone else in the car. He said it was like they were all almost in a trance.
So the question is, why were these cars pulled over? What had happened?
Good luck, my friends!
Answer time. Puzzler answer time.
It was a hot and muggy night. Dougie is driving on route 10, about 50 miles away from Los Angeles. The date was August 17th, 1992.
He passes a car parked on the side of the road. But they don't have the hood up or anything. They are just sitting there. He drives on and forgets about it.
Then he sees 4 more cars parked on the side of the road. And then more cars. Over the next 5 miles, he sees 10 more cars. And people are just sitting in the car, like in a trance. Looking straight ahead. Not talking to each other. Not changing tires or checking under the hood... Nothing. And the question was, what happened to all these cars?
And here is the answer. The date was a very important clue!
They were all listening to a baseball game. On that night, August 17th, 1992, there was a no-hitter being pitched by the Dodgers against the San Francisco Giants. Everyone wants to listen to the no-hitter. And this was 1992, so people were listening on their radios. And at about 50 miles out of town, they were losing the signal on their radios, so they were slowing down and stopping, right about 50 miles out, so they could hear the end of the game.
So that's why they were not checking under the hood or changing tires. Or talking to each other. They were not broken down. They were intently listening to a suspenseful baseball game.
