How to Hum

Time for the puzzler.

This one is middle of the road, not amazing but not awful.

Here we go.

Very few people know that we had a barber shop quartet at the garage, even though we had six guys. And the reason it was a quartet is that a few of the guys didn't know how to sing.

So one of the guys decides he's going to go to the library and he is going to get a book on how to sing.

He quickly realizes that he is so bad at singing, that he has to start at square one, so he decides to learn how to hum first. He figures if he learns how to hum, he might have a good shot at learning how to sing after that.

So, he goes to the library. He has never been to the library before, so he doesn't know anything about the Dewey Decimal System or the card catalog. He knows nothing so he just walks around.

He walks all the aisles until he finds a book that says, "How To Hum."

He says, "Great."

Takes the book, he sits down at a table and begins to read. There is nothing in the book at all about singing, music, or how to hum.

What was the book that he pulled off the shelf?

Good luck.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Tricky Truck

It's time for the new puzzler. And I thought I would use an automotive puzzler.

This is a real, actual true story, because it happened to none other than yours truly.

This one has to do with my old truck.

My son comes to me years ago, my older son, Louie, who had been driving my truck, and he says, "Dad, there's something wrong with the truck."

I said, "What, is it out of gas again?"

And he says, "No, no. I start the thing up in the morning and I drive it. And then he radio stops working, the whole radio won't work. The whole thing is dead. And I drive it for a little bit, and it comes on all by itself, and it goes off again. It is all messed up."

So, I decide I am going to fix the truck. So, I take the truck into the shop the next morning. And while I am driving, I notice that the radio indeed stops working. But I also notice something else. Something really interesting. When I step on the gas, it stops working. When I take my foot off the gas and go to step on the brake, it starts working again. Then when I take my foot off the brake, and step on the gas, it stops working again.

So I think to myself, this will be easy to fix. It must be a loose wire under the dash. When I step on the gas, the throttle cables must be hitting this loose wire causing the radio to stop working. Simple.

So when I get to the shop, I spend 2 hours working on this truck. There is no loose wire. There is constant current going to the radio. I can't find any reason that this might be happening. The truck appears to work perfectly. The radio works fine. I can't recreate the problem in the garage.

So, I give up on the truck for the day. As I am driving the thing home, the same thing happens, of course. So on this drive home I am fiddling with everything on the dash. And I discover that when I pushed in the cigarette lighter, the radio worked. I pulled out the cigarette lighter, the radio stopped working. So, I put the lighter in, and I hold it in. I don't let it pop out, and the radio works the whole time. Until the cigarette lighter fuse blows and then the radio stops working again.

I continue the drive home and I realize at that moment, that I can't see a thing. All of a sudden, both headlights have stopped working.

And just then, I realize what is happening.

And the puzzler is, what is going on here?