Announcement from Car Talk Plaza

We're going back to the beginning of Car Talk—we hope you'll join us! Starting today, Car Talk will release two episodes a week. Double the laughs, double the lousy car advice, and double the puzzlers! Subscribe to our podcast and never miss an episode.

The First President

RAY: All right, this is a good one. I chose this myself. Who was the first president of the United States to use a bulletproof car?

And what kind of a car was it?

And your clue is it was not a Chrysler, and not Ronald Reagan.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Young Mathematician

RAY: Several hundred years ago, somewhere in Europe, in a classroom, a teacher is assigning the students some busy work as a kind of punishment because the class has been misbehaving.

The teacher says "Okay, wise guys, I want you to add up all the numbers between one and 100. I.e. one plus two, plus three, six. Four, plus five, plus six, plus seven."

As you can see, it begins to get tough. And don't forget, they were little kids, they could barely even make the numbers! After about a minute or so, one of the kids raises his hand and says, I have the answer.

And the teacher says, "The heck you do!"

But the student says, "The answer is 5050." And indeed that was the answer. The question is, how did he do it so quickly?

And part two for extra credit is, who was this kid? (He was a famous mathematician.) What's his name?