A Travel Request

Time for the new puzzler. Here you go.

Back in the day, a long time ago, when the British were colonizing the rest of the world, one of their territories was India. They colonized the whole world but India was one of the last places that they relinquished.

At that time, British upper-crust people would travel by boat, because that was the only mode of transportation, from England to their colony in India. And when they would buy their tickets on this huge boat, they would demand a certain type of stateroom for the voyage. They would demand this of the ticket agents.

And those who were in the know always insisted on having a compartment that was on the left or port side of the ship on the way to India. But on the return trip, on the way back, they would demand to be on the other side of the ship. The starboard or right side.

So, out of this strange travel request, a word was invented.

When they left England they wanted to travel on the port side as they went out of England, and as they came home, they wanted to travel on the starboard or the right side.

So, what word was invented by this travel request, and why?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Three Lamps

The puzzler this week is not automotive in nature. It is non-automotive, as we say here at Car Talk.

Here it is.

There are two windowless rooms. These rooms are on two different ends of a long curved hallway. Both the rooms have doors. So when you're in one room, you can't see into the hallway or the other room around the corner. At all. So basically, you can't see one room when you are in the other.

In one of the rooms, there are three lamps on a table.

And in the other room, down the curved hallway, there are three light switches.

Each of the three switches in one room controls one of the lamps in the other room, all the way down the hall.

And the puzzler is, with the fewest number of visits from room to room, to figure out which lamp goes with which switch. You can turn on one or more of the switches at a time, but then you have to walk all the way to the other room down the hall to figure out which lamp turned on. And then you have to walk back.

And so the question is, what is the minimum number of trips you can take to know which switch controls which lamp?