Jimmy Cagney's Assistant

It's time for the puzzler.

You've all seen those old movies? Those old movies with Jimmy Cagney, you know, "You dirty rat. You're the guy who sent up my brother!"

And he's got a leather jacket and a scarf around his neck climbing into a plane. Remember the great line? "I can fly the crates they come in."

Everyone's seen those movies. So, he climbs into the plane and his assistant prepares for takeoff.

And all those planes were started by hanging on the prop and pulling it, starting it much like you would crank an old-timey Model T Ford. And of course, they had electric starters, later on. But that was the way they were all started back then. And once the plane was started, they'd remove the chocks from the wheels and they'd fly off into the sunset and do whatever they did.

But the question is about the starting procedure. You'll notice if you watch those movies that the assistant always takes a hold of the prop. And when he starts it, what he's going to do is he's going to snap the prop, and that's what gets the crankshaft turning and gets the pistons all moving and that's what starts it. But before he snaps the prop, he will turn the prop, sometimes an entire revolution, very slowly. And then once he has done that, then he will start the engine. So, the question is, why?

Why what? Why did he always turn the prop very slowly at first?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Ticking Valve

Are you ready for the new puzzler?

There was this fellow. And this fellow had let's say a 1985 Nissan Sentra. The car is unimportant. It just happened to be a Nissan Sentra, but it could be anything. And his problem was that he had a noisy valve. So being a do-it-yourselfer of sorts, he decided to adjust his valves. And he removed the valve covers and he adjusted the valves. So he puts the valve cover back on. And with great anticipation, he starts the engine and it's still clicking and ticking.

So the next day he takes it to his mechanic. His mechanic says, "You obviously screwed it up. You need a valve adjustment." So the mechanic adjusts the valves. They start up the engine and tick tick tick tick. Kind of like a time bomb.

So the mechanics says, "Oh, you just need a camshaft." And the fellow says, "No, I'm not going to do the camshaft and I'm going to wait until it gets worse. What's the worst that can happen? It chews up the camshaft even more. In which case I'll still need a new camshaft."

So the noise goes along like this for several months. Three months later, he takes the car for a tune-up. They tune the car up. He drives it home and he realizes halfway home that the noise is gone. It just took him a while to realize it.

What happened?

He called them up. In fact, he said, "What did you do to my car? Did you adjust my valves?"

And they said, "We didn't adjust no stinking valves!"

So the question is, how did a tuneup solve this problem?