Folkloric, historic and occasionally sophomoric
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It's time for the new puzzler. This is a puzzle of old. I remember, some years ago, I was working on something like a General Motors car maybe like a Dodge, and I was changing the customer's gas filter. And because our sign was out being dry cleaned when it says customers are not allowed in the area where we fix the cars, he was standing looking over my shoulder making sure that I did the right thing. So I was changing his gas filter and as I did that gas spilled onto the exhaust manifold. And he ran for the fire extinguisher, came back, and pointed it right at me. And he said, "You just spilled gasoline on the red hot exhaust manifold! Aren't you afraid it's going to catch fire?" And I explained, "No, I'm actually not afraid of that!" And he said, "Well, I'll tell you an interesting story, young man! I spilled motor oil once on the manifold of this very car. And it burst into flame." And I said, "Yeah, that's true that could possibly happen." And the question is, why is it that he could spill motor oil on the manifold? Let's assume the manifold is the same temperature as it was the time I spilled the gas onto it. And when he spilled motor oil on it, it burst into flames. Yet when I spilled gasoline, which everyone knows is quite flammable, that the gasoline did not catch fire?
| | | Remember last week's puzzler? | | Counting Hairs
Let's say you have a town in which there are 200,000 people.
I want to know, what are the chances that two inhabitants of that town will have exactly the same number of hairs on their heads? Now I will. I will stipulate that no one in this town can have more than 100,000 hairs and nobody will have fewer than zero.
So you have a town of 200,000 people. And you have heads of hair that have between zero and 100,000 hairs. So I want to know what are the chances that there are two inhabitants of this town that have exactly the same number of hairs? Not necessarily in the same place. You could have like you want hairs on the front and somebody could have eight hairs on the back and that would be a match.
| | Congratulations to this week's puzzler winner: Glenn Reid Waterford, CT
Congratulations! This correct answer was chosen at random by our Web Lackeys. | | |
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