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 Hungry Bookworm

My brother has written three books. The Collected Works of Thomas Q. Magliozzi, right. It's actually one book, which consists of three volumes while Volume One, Volume Two, and Volume C.

They're on the shelf in order one, two, and three. Now a bookworm is going to eat its way from the first page of Volume One to the last page of Volume Three.

Now the pages of each of these volumes amount to three inches. So each volume has three inches of pages. And each cover is a quarter of an inch thick

He's gonna eat his wave from the first page of Volume One, the last page of Volume Three. And we want to know, the covers are a quarter of an inch thick. Each volume has three inches worth of pages. How many inches of material does this bookworm digest?

Now any fourth grader can figure this out. So if you have one, ask them!

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

What's That Smell?

It's time for the new puzzler. And as I promised this wasn't going to be as lousy as the last one.

Here it is. There is a smell that comes from modern cars that people associate with the catalytic converter. And I'm going to ask about another smell that comes from modern cars, cars with catalytic converters. So you often get this smell from cars that are equipped with catalytic converters.

But this smell is not coming from inside the converter. It has nothing to do with what's going on inside the converter.

I will give a hint. If cars of fifty years ago had catalytic converters, they would not have made the smell. The smell would not come from these cars. And it has nothing to do with the gasoline. What is the smell and what causes it?