Friday, May 2, 2025

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This Week's Puzzler

The Carving


Time for the new puzzler. 

Here it is. 

Somewhere in a land far, far away, a teenage boy was smitten with a teenage girl in his high school freshman class.

He made his feelings known. He was overjoyed at finding them reciprocated. She liked him right back. So to commemorate their love, he took pen knife to a young hardwood in the vicinity and carved their initials with a heart five feet up the tree's trunk.

Sadly, by their senior year, the girl fell out of love with the boy. She left him. She took her diploma, went away to the big city and married. 

The boy was inconsolable. Completely crushed. Bidding his family farewell, he took his small savings that he got from selling lemonade, bought a bus ticket, went to the east coast and shipped out in a menial job on a broken down freighter. 

So, 25 years later, captain of his own vessel, owner of a small freighter fleet, and with a major interest in a few oil tankers, he indulged a nostalgic whim and returned for the first time ever to his old hometown. 

Imagine his joy when he discovered his old sweetheart living back in their hometown, now a widow.

One thing led to another. The flame reignited, and one day they searched for their tree. It was not hard to find. It was near a rock, near a river, and they immediately found it. 

Now here's the puzzler.

If the tree had added 35% to its height in the first 15 years of his absence, 10% in the following five years, and 2.5% in the ensuing eight years, how far up the trunk did they have to look to find the carving with their initials in it?

Good luck.
Answer the Puzzler »
Remember last week's puzzler?

The Last Train Car

Puzzler time. This is a puzzler of yesteryear. The best kind of puzzler, you know. 

Anyway, here it is. 

Imagine, if you will, a long freight train, like the kind you see out west. A train with a couple hundred freight cars.

It is on a big cross country trip, carrying all the things. It pulls into the train yard, for a scheduled stop. On this stop all the workers get off the train to stretch their legs. 

Then it is time to take off again so all the train workers, they get back in, and the engineer opens the throttle and the train starts to pull away from the yard.

As they pull away, they realize that the caboose has a problem. The brake is frozen on one of the wheels of the caboose of the train. 

The wheel is being dragged along. There's sparks and smoke coming off the track. So someone standing there yells for the train to stop.

They manage the signal to the engineer to stop the train.

Well, they work on it for a bit, but they can't fix it. So they just cut the caboose loose. They remove that last car and then wave them on to go ahead with their journey. 

So the engineer gives it the throttle, the train doesn't move. He gives it more throttle. It doesn't move. He gives it more. Doesn't move.

And what's happening is the train isn't moving, but his wheels are spinning on the track. 

The cars aren't moving. There's nothing wrong with any of the remaining cars, and there's nothing wrong with the engine. But the train won't move.

The question is, what's wrong with this picture?
Find out here »
Congratulations to this week's
puzzler winner:

 John Schubert
Coopersburg, PA
Congratulations! This correct answer was chosen at random by our Web Lackeys.

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