New Year Poison

Time for a new puzzler. This is not automotive, but still a really good puzzler for people.

Imagine it is New Year's Eve.

A bunch of people attend a fancy party to celebrate for New Year's Eve. About 60 or so people attend this event.

So at this New Year's Eve party, they serve various things that you find at parties. There's champagne for a champagne toast, and there's a bowl of fruit punch with ice cubes in it, and various cheeses and fruit displays, hors d'oeuvres and desserts, a whole spread of food across a long table.

In any case, one of the guests comes to the party, but he leaves early. But before he leaves, he partakes of all the various things. He has a glass of champagne. He has some fruit punch. He tries every one of the hors d'oeuvres and all the desserts. He has some of everything before he leaves. He leaves hours before any of the other guests leave. The other guests all party into the night and ring in the new year.

The next morning, all the other guests are found dead. The butler had off the night before, due to the holiday. So when he arrives in the morning, all the other guests are laying about the house, and they are all dead.

The cops determine that the guests had all been poisoned. They've clearly been poisoned by something that was on the table the night before. Something they all ate or drank.

Yet, this guy that left early is alive and well. Even though he ate and drank everything that everyone else did, he survived.

How is this possible?

And hint: he is not immune to anything, and he did not poison the other people himself. He ate everything and just simple didn't die.

Good luck.

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Sun and the Moon

This one is not automotive, at all. It is celestial, you might say. Here we go.

Everyone knows that from the planet earth, the moon and the sun appear to be about the same size. I mean, even though we know they're not the same size, to the casual observer from our vantage point, they're about the same size when we look at them up in the sky.

This is why we get to see such amazing things like eclipses.

Now, knowing this, you can take, for example, the tip of your finger, and hold your hand up, you can close one eye, and you can block out the sun with your finger. From your vantage point on earth, we know you can do this. (We are not recommending you try this! Just take our word for it. You should not try to look at the sun...)

However, you go out at night and you hold that same finger up in front of the moon and close one eye, and you can't block out the moon.

So, you can block out the sun with that finger, but you can't block out the moon.

Why is that?