Springfield

Today's puzzler is about geography. No cars in this one. Well, it is about cities and towns, so there are probably a bunch of cars in those cities and towns... but that doesn't really count.

Back in the day, my brother had stated on the show this little tidbit. He had said, years ago, that there was a town or city named Springfield in every state in the country. He said there were 50 towns named Springfield, one in each state.

Well, we got a lot of letters and a lot of calls... We were not correct about that one! We were very, very wrong. We were not even close to that fact. And we are still trying to recover from the chaos of that mistake!

So we had listeners writing in, telling us how many cities and towns were named Springfield, and it was not in every state, and that some states had two or three towns named Springfield!

Anyway, this leads us to our actual puzzler for today.

We originally thought that the most popular name in the country for a city or town was the name Springfield. But that is not the case.

So, what is the most popular name for a city or town in the United States? That is the question.

No cheating on the internet!

Honest guesses only!

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

Little Things

It is time for the newest puzzler. I have a vast array of puzzlers at my disposal, and then it gets hard to decide which one to use.

This one is an actual automotive puzzler. I think it is about time for one of those. This one is somewhat challenging and very interesting, I think. This situation actually occurred with one of our customers years ago.

This happened back in the day. This fellow had a 1984 Honda Civic, so this was a long time ago... Anyway, he had a hard time keeping the car running. He would start it up and it would stall. Start and stall. Start and stall. A classic problem. We have talked about this problem a million times on the show. It is a bad sparkplug wire. So, he goes and buys a new set of sparkplug wires from the local discount store. This set says it should fit all cars. So, he gets these wires and he puts them on. And for a little while the car works fine.

Then, a few months later, the car started acting up again. Same thing. So, this fellow calls the shop and explains the situation. We tell him it is probably because he bought cheap, generic sparkplug wires. Go get some good, high quality sparkplug wires and it will be fine. So, he takes our advice. In fact, he goes to the Honda dealer and pays the full retail price for a certified set of fancy sparkplug wires right from the dealership.

So, he has his new set of high end sparkplug wires, and everything is running perfectly for three months. Three months later, the rainy season is back again, and so is the problem. Same thing. He calls us again. He asks us what is going on with his car. I tell him maybe the Honda wires were defective. He says, no way. Then he goes and gets yet another set of sparkplug wires. He puts that set in and of course, three months later, the problem is back. Again.

So, finally, instead of calling for free advice, he finally brings the car into the shop to have us look at it.

So, we take a look. Then we sell him yet another set of sparkplug wires. And we sell him something else, that costs about $2 bucks. And this 'something else' solves his problem completely.

What did we sell him with the sparkplug wires that solved his problem? Hint, it was a couple of little things, very inexpensive. What were they?