The Rents

Today's puzzler is historic, brought to us by an old book of trivia sent in from a listener years ago.

Here it is.

In Ireland in the 1800s, it was common for peasants to rent the land they lived on from landlords. And, as is often the case, rents would get out of hand and the rent collectors became very unpopular fellows.

One particular rental agent was collecting taxes for the Earl of Erne in County Mayo, and this land agent ignored the peasants' pleas for more reasonable rents during a time when things were really rough. The peasants were so poor, they had nothing at all to spare. But he insisted on collecting these outrageously high rents anyway for the Earl.

So, one morning he awoke to find that he was apparently invisible to the town folk. His servants had left him. The shops in town would not wait on him. The blacksmith would not see his horse. The mailman didn't bring his mail, and most importantly, he could get no one to harvest his crops. So he called in the army. He asked for 50 laborers and an escort of 2000 soldiers to come to his assistance because he was fearful of some kind of civil unrest.

So, when the small army arrived in the town, they found there was no transportation available at the train station. All the shops and pubs in town were suddenly closed and out of everything. So, the army walked 15 miles to the farm and then ate him out of his house and home while harvesting the crops. Then he found he could not sell the crops that were left over. No one in town would buy the crops.

Other than these petty annoyances, the man never came to any harm, and in fact lived to a ripe old age. He lived long enough, in fact, to see his name become a household word.

What was his name?

Good luck.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Mechanic Shrug

This one will be a little better this time. This one is from a long time ago.

A while back, we used to have all these trade magazines in the garage. And just recently I was reading one of these old motor magazines and I was reminded of something that happened back in the garage back then that would make a great puzzler.

So, a customer came in with a 1985 Honda Accord. He wants a tune up. So we do the tune up. And after paying the bill, he leaves happy.

He comes back about a week or two later, saying, "Jeeze guys, I hate to complain but since the tune up, my car runs lousy first thing in the morning. Especially on cold mornings, and the colder it is, the worse it runs. I think maybe you all did something wrong."

So we all look at each other and do the mechanic shrug... So he leaves the car with us. And we just pour over it. We checked everything. We check the timing, we check the operation of the choke, and we can't find anything wrong with it at all.

So we give the car back. He drives it another week and then comes back and says, "Guys, I hate to say this, but it is not any better. In fact, now that the weather is getting even colder, it's even worse."

So we took the car back and parked it in the corner of the garage. Then one of my guys walked over to it and said, "Oh, I know what's wrong..."

Then, he replaced the air filter. Now, we had already replaced the air filter when we did the tune up. But he replaced it again.

Then he calls the guy and says, "Your car is all fixed." And he didn't even test it. And sure enough, the car was fixed.

So, here is the puzzler, how could replacing the air filter a second time have solved the issue? And I should mention, that the first air filter was not defective at all.