Announcement from Car Talk Plaza

We're going back to the beginning of Car Talk—we hope you'll join us! Starting today, Car Talk will release two episodes a week. Double the laughs, double the lousy car advice, and double the puzzlers! Subscribe to our podcast and never miss an episode.

Of Streets and Surnames

We're gonna make it a two-part puzzle. Part A is: what is the most common street name in the United States?

By common, we mean "most used." So if you went to every single town, village, and hamlet or fair city in the United States and looked at all the street names and tallied up every street name that you found, number one on the list would be ___? And no it would not be Maple Street. So that's the first part.

Part B, we know that the most common surname is Smith. But what is the second most common?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Hot Manifold

It's time for the new puzzler. This is a puzzle of old.

I remember, some years ago, I was working on something like a General Motors car maybe like a Dodge, and I was changing the customer's gas filter. And because our sign was out being dry cleaned when it says customers are not allowed in the area where we fix the cars, he was standing looking over my shoulder making sure that I did the right thing. So I was changing his gas filter and as I did that gas spilled onto the exhaust manifold.

And he ran for the fire extinguisher, came back, and pointed it right at me. And he said, "You just spilled gasoline on the red hot exhaust manifold! Aren't you afraid it's going to catch fire?" And I explained, "No, I'm actually not afraid of that!"

And he said, "Well, I'll tell you an interesting story, young man! I spilled motor oil once on the manifold of this very car. And it burst into flame." And I said, "Yeah, that's true that could possibly happen."

And the question is, why is it that he could spill motor oil on the manifold? Let's assume the manifold is the same temperature as it was the time I spilled the gas onto it. And when he spilled motor oil on it, it burst into flames. Yet when I spilled gasoline, which everyone knows is quite flammable, that the gasoline did not catch fire?