An Old, Old Puzzler

Time for the new puzzler. Well, the new old puzzler. This one is from a while ago. It is very old. But still good! Here goes.

A fellow enters a subway station in our fair city.

He bounded down the stairs.

And in the subway station is a woman in the little booth dispensing subway tokens which cost 40 cents a piece. 40 cents! Yeah, this is an old puzzle.

Tokens then were 40 cents a piece, if you can believe it.

The man hands the woman behind the window one dollar. There are no words spoken. No words are spoken at all because the man can't speak. He is deaf.

Without words being spoken and without any hand signs or signaling, the woman dispensing the tickets, the attendant, hands back to the man two tokens, and 20 cents change.

The question is, how did she know the man wanted two tokens?

And remember, no words were spoken, no sign language used, and he had no companion with him at that time.

How did the token attendant know to sell him two tokens and give him 20 cents change for his dollar?

Answer the Puzzler »

Remember last week's puzzler?

The Observer

This new puzzler was sent in by a very dedicated listener. We get lots of puzzlers sent in and most of them are pretty bad. Most are so bad, we just throw them out. We have standards, after all.

But this one is great. The details of this one are important, so I will try to remember everything. Here is how it goes.

It was the start of a cold and blustery day. I was seated with the owner of a towing and repair company. We were drinking the first cup of coffee of the day together. While we were sitting there, we were watching a line of cars that were lined up at the light outside.

My school newspaper was running a feature on successful businessmen of our small town, located between two ridges of mountains. The owner of the repair company was highly regarded in the town. In fact, he was so good at spotting car problems that some thought he had second sight. I asked him why he was so good at his job. And he told me he would just observe things. He said this as he continued to look out the window at the cars at the light.

"Take that car right there," he said. "The one with the out of state tags," he said interrupting my train of thought. "Notice that the people in the front seat are wiping the inside of the windshield with tissues while they're waiting for the light."

So what I thought. it's very cold out.

He watched the car pass through the intersection. "Let's go," he said.

"Where?" I asked him.

"That car will break down before they get to the top of the first mountain," he said. We followed them out of town on the main road and sure enough, there they were on the side of the road all standing around in the cold with the hood up.

What did the shop owner see as the car passed through the intersection that indicated it was going to break down?

Now, we want a complete answer to this one. A well thought out answer.

But here is a hint, to help you out. Everyone is going to guess that the heater core is leaking, right? Because they were cleaning off the inside of the window. But that is not good enough.

We need a more thorough, more detailed answer than that. Good luck.