Something Awful

The simple new puzzler. This one is simple.

This fellow pulls into a filling station, I guess you'd call them a gas station these days. And this fellow is driving a pickup truck.

And in the back of the pickup truck, he has a few gas cans, metal gas cans, which are empty, and he's going to fill them up so he can go back to the ranch and fill up the tractor, and the ATVs and the dirt bikes and the chainsaw and all that. So rather than take the cans out of the truck, which would be a lot of work, and wasted motion, he grabs the gas pump nozzle and jumps into the bed of the truck. And then he starts filling up the cans from there. From the bed of the truck.

The owner of the gas station from the other side of the parking lot sees this happening and he hears a noise. Everyone at the station hears a noise.

As the fellow was filling up one of the gas cans, the owner heard a noise. He comes running over to the truck saying, "Stop, stop! Don't do that!"

But it was too late. Something awful happened.

What happened? And why?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Overheating and Intriguing

This new puzzler is gonna be better than last week's crummy puzzler. I'm not sure it qualifies for greatness status. But it is better than last week's puzzler.

Okay, here it is. Not an original puzzler. This didn't happen to me, but it is still good.

Here it is;

My friend drives an '83 Toyota Tercel. She took it to a mechanic because it was overheating. The mechanic checked it all out and he replaced the radiator. The entire radiator. But this made the problem worse. The car was still overheating. Replaced the radiator and it overheats more. This is intriguing.

She returned the car to the mechanic. He and all of his co-workers, not just one or two, but all of them were completely baffled. They stood around while the car was running, smoking cigarettes, and drinking coffee, which is what mechanics do when they can't figure out the problem. They do that little mechanic shrug, smoke a cigarette, and drink coffee. They were trying to figure out what was wrong.

Suddenly, one mechanic exclaimed, "Ah ha! I've got it!"

What did he see?

The hint is, of course, that there was nothing wrong with the new radiator. There was, however, something wrong with the old one and they did well to replace the old radiator.
But that mechanic saw something while he was sitting there smoking a cigarette that told him what was wrong.

What was wrong? What did the mechanic see?

Good luck!