The Yard

Puzzler time.

It was a dark and stormy night, of course. Isn't it always?

Anyway, it was a dark and stormy night and our pal Krusty had been assigned a little mission.

His wife was out at a meeting. And he was supposed to pick her up. But he doesn't remember how to get to the location. So he drives to the area where he thinks she might be, but he can't find the meeting place.

But he does find a church. And he remembers that if he goes north from the church, he will find the location of the meeting. So he looks up to try to figure out which way is north, but of course, its dark and stormy so he can't see the stars. He looks around and there are no street signs. It is very late. And this is way before cell phones and things like that. There's no one around, no other drivers on the road, no one to ask for directions.

So he drives around, drives by all these houses and they're few and far between because he's way out in the sticks. He doesn't wanna knock on anyone's door because he will wake people up, there's no lights on in any of the houses. He finally sees, nestled behind a stand of pine trees, a little house and a light on in the house. Somebody's home. So he walks through the door and he's about to ring the bell when he looks in the window and sees a fellow in the living room in his underwear asleep on the couch. He doesn't wanna wake the guy. He clearly fell asleep while watching TV.

Then, all of a sudden he has a revelation. He walks away from the front door without waking the guy. He looks in the guy's yard. And then he gets right back into his car and drives directly north, and picks up his wife.

How did he do it? How did he find north by looking in the guy's yard?

Good luck!

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Mountains of Trouble

This one is an old one. Like, really old.

Many, many years ago we had a customer come into the shop. He was having a peculiar problem with his brakes. So from time to time, he would lose the brakes, meaning he would step on the pedal and it would sink to the floor.

Then, if he pumped the brakes like crazy, or if he just got lucky, the brakes would return. If he managed to pull over without crashing and waited for a while, the brakes would be okay.

So, the first time it happened, he was in the White Mountains of New Hampshire traveling up and down the mountain roads. It was really scary, so he pulled into a local shop and they couldn't find anything wrong with the brakes at all. So he continued his journey.

A little while later, an hour into the trip, it happened again. He pulled it into another shop which was a little more enterprising. They replaced the calipers, pads, the master cylinder, the power booster, all of the wheel cylinders, all the brake lines...They replaced everything.

So he leaves. And of course, a few hours later, the problem returns. So, the guy brings the car into our shop. We go over it. Everything is new, so we look at it thinking, it must be something else. We go over the whole car, and we can find nothing wrong. The guy takes it to a couple of other shops, and they can also find nothing wrong with it.

Months go by. He comes back in for just routine maintenance and he mentions that if he drives the car around town, the brake issue is never a problem. It was only a problem when he went on these extended trips and was in the mountains.

We do the oil and filter change. We also discovered that his water pump was leaking. We replaced the water pump. And he tells us it is a little loud, so maybe there is a hole in the muffler. And there is, so we replace the muffler and the tailpipe, basically his exhaust system.

And after that, the original problem with the brakes was fixed!

So, which one of those things fixed his original problem?