One Percent Potatoes

Time for the new puzzler. This one is interesting. Here we go.

It is a little known fact, for the purposes of this puzzler, that potatoes are 99% water and only 1% potato. Or 1% dry matter, the stuff that makes a potato a potato.

So, imagine you were to take 100 pounds of potatoes and you set them out on your back porch to dry out. You leave them out in the sun. When you do this, they will start to dry out.

As they dry out, of course the water begins to evaporate. And after a while enough water has evaporated so that the potatoes are now 98% water.

If you were to weigh those potatoes at that moment, when they are 98% water, how much lighter would they be?

Good luck.

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Remember last week's puzzler?

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This is an old one. And you have to be old to even try to get this one.

Back in the day, there was a TV series called Perry Mason. And there was a detective on that show named Paul Drake.

So, if you remember that, you can do this puzzler.

Many years ago, Paul Drake had to hire a new assistant and he had three candidates in his office. He decided to interview them and give them a little quiz.

So he said, "Look, guys, there's a crime that needs to be solved. And there's a clue in one of the public libraries in Bakersfield. The clue is stuck inside a book between pages 165 and 166. This is a book about cars that's written by two famous brothers."

Two of the guys jump up and bolt out the door. The third guy doesn't move. He just sits there.

Drake says, "You've got the job."

Why did the third guy get the job? What did he know that the other two applicants did not know?