The Many Clutches

This week's puzzler is one from the past. So this is an oldie.

It was a fellow that came into the garage with a pickup truck. It was a big Ford pickup, an old one.

And he had put a clutch in his pickup truck. He personally had put a clutch in his pickup, and it was good for a few months. And lo and behold it stopped working. He was unable to disengage. He'd the step on the pedal and it would go 'RhyeaRhyeaRhyea", and then gee, what's the matter? Nobody knew. So he put a new clutch in, again by himself.

And then he was all right for a while and then he hears the worst possible sound, and he can't shift it.

So finally he puts another one in and of course, this one doesn't even work for a minute. He just can't shift it and he assumes that there's something else wrong with it other than the clutch. And by this point, he has replaced everything, the clutch, disc, the pressure plate, the release bearing, the pilot bearing. (Now we had this puzzle once before and we said it was the pilot bearing. So don't send that answer in because that isn't it!)

He finally gave up and he took the car to us. We gave up too! No, we didn't give up; we found we found the answer. There was nothing wrong with any of the clutches he had put in all nor was there anything wrong with his transmission, nor was there anything wrong with his shifter. The problem was somewhere else. And it was kind of interesting.

There are a lot of cars this can happen to, but you would not see this happen to a vehicle with a hydraulic clutch.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Number Sequence Encore

Well, the guys got lazy in this week's show. They decided to "extend" the current puzzler for another episode (Translation: Ray was too busy shampooing his trunk and didn't come up with a new puzzler).

Here it is again, in case you missed it, with our apologies for the slothful conduct of our colleagues!

It's time for the new puzzler and this is this one is a good one. This is a very simple one. All of us are familiar with the kinds of puzzles where we give a sequence of numbers and ask you to name the next term.

For example, one, three, five, seven, nine, twenty-three. What's the next term? Right?

Well, this is just like that. And I'm going to read it just like that. I'm going to give you a string of numbers all separated by commas. And I will say where the commas are. And I want you to give us the next term.

Here's, here's the sequence of numbers. "1 comma 11 comma 21 comma 1211 comma 111,221 comma space." Now, what's the next term?

Now to be fair, my brother insisted that I had given you the numbers wrong, so here's how he read them.

"1 <pause> 11 <pause> 21 <pause> 1211 <pause> 111221 <end>"

And neither one of those things will help you at all! My brother was adamant that we also ask you why? So our question is, what's the next term and why?