The Grocery Bag

Hmm, well here it's time for the new puzzler. Here's what happened. A fellow happened to go into his mechanic with a late model Toyota Tercel that was running poorly. And what it was doing is, it was jerking when it was trying to accelerate.

It was especially bad if the engine was warmed up. And the mechanic had done many things to it to try to get this, and several other mechanics had done many things. They tuned it up and added gas treatment to it and changed all, all the tune-up things. They added motor medic, motor honey, motor sweetie, all kinds of stuff and nothing could make this thing run correctly.

This is like a Humpty Dumpty story, isn't it? All the mechanics and all of his men couldn't put the Tercel back together again.

Anyway, this mechanic was checking out the car. And he happened to notice a bag of groceries in the backseat, and he was hungry and he was thinking about helping himself to a banana.

But then all of the sudden, something clicked. He remembered reading an article on this very car.

And he said to the owner, he said, "Gee, you have something in the backseat there, in your bag of groceries that can fix this car!"

Now I'm gonna give you the list of the things that were in the bag.

There were three bananas, a tube of preparation H, two containers of low-fat yogurt, a bag of Blue Diamond walnuts, and a tin of shoe polish (brown). And of course a pint of extra virgin olive oil.

Now it isn't a simple matter of you know taking the one item and smearing it over the air cleaner or pouring it into the gas tank something. There's a special process.

And seeing the item reminded him. It jogged his memory.

He said "Aha!"

So one of these items is the key to fixing this car. Which one of them is it?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Paradise, Nirvana, Valhalla, and Hell

Now I usually do the stimulating, intelligent puzzlers that you hear on this show and I had one all prepared. But I somehow or another (I don't know how this happened) allowed my brother to choose the one for this week.

He claimed he was the brains of this outfit, and insisted he gets the opportunity to choose the puzzle. So he chose one sent in by a listener named Kirk Veneer (you may have heard of his brother Mahogony.)

Here's what the letter says:

A few weeks ago, I was listening to your show and you were having a lively discussion on the virtues of the Jaguar XJ SV12. I listened as you debated whether or not the Jaguar XJSV12. Convertible (dark blue) could take you to Nirvana. Remember that? Well, I wanted to shed some light on this topic. Not only can the Jaguar XJS take you to Nirvana, but it can also take you to Valhalla, Paradise, and even to Hell, providing you are driving in what state?

Well, I know I usually drive in a state of confusion. So the question is: if you can drive in the same state to Paradise, Nirvana, Valhalla, and even Hell, what state are you in? I'll even give you a hint, it's one of the 48 contiguous states.