RAY: Hi we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers. And here's the answer to last week's puzzler.

TOM: I remember last week's puzzler by some, I don't know why.

RAY: I didn't really ask you to remember it.

TOM: I remember it though. It had to do with a tree.

RAY: Yes, it did. This lovely little story was sent to us from a guy named Bob Powers for Shreveport, La. He doesn't say whether or not it's autobiographical, but I could only assume that it is. A teenage boy smitten with a teenage girl in his high school freshman class makes his feelings known. Overjoyed at finding them reciprocated, he took a pen knife to a young hardwood tree in the vicinity and carved their initials within a heart five feet up on the tree's trunk, as boys will do.

TOM: Like Tommy and Joanne.

RAY: There you go.

TOM: Oh, so sweet.

RAY: Anyway, by senior year the girl dumped him. She took her diploma, went away to the big city and got married. The boy, devastated, was inconsolable. Bidding his family farewell, he took his small savings, that he got from selling lemonade.

TOM: Don't tell me. He joined the Merchant Marine.

RAY: Buys a bus ticket, goes to the East Coast and shipped out in menial job on a broken down freighter.

TOM: Freighter. Don't you love it?

RAY: Can't you see it now?

TOM: No, not really.

RAY: 25 years later, captain of his own vessel, owner of a small freighter fleet, and with a major interest in a few oil tankers, he indulges in a nostalgic whim --

TOM: Did he buy Microsoft stock?

RAY: Yes, yes, owner of Microsoft stock at 80 cents a share. And he returns for the first time ever to his old home town. To gloat, you would imagine.

TOM: Sure.

RAY: Imagine his joy when he discovers that his old sweetheart is living there, now a widow.

TOM: Ah.

RAY: Yeah.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: Her former husband had been inexplicably rundown by a freighter while sunning himself on the beach.

TOM: On the beach.

RAY: One day in Acapulco.

TOM: A freighter just happened to go by.

RAY: Right up on shore, you know.

TOM: The earth's changing magnetic fields threw off the compass.

RAY: Stuff happens. Oh, god. One thing led to another. The flame reignited and one day they searched for their tree. It wasn't hard to find. It was a big rock near the river of the tree, you know, trees don't move around much.

TOM: Yeah, they said there's the tree. There's our tree dear.

RAY: Here's the question. It had been 28 years since he had carved their initials.

TOM: Right. The three since he was a freshman --

RAY: Three since high school, 25 when he was at sea. If the tree had added 35% to its height in the first fifteen years of his absence, 10% in the following five years, and two and a half percent in each of the ensuing eight years, how far up the trunk did they have to look to find the carving with their initials?

TOM: Which was originally where, five feet off the ground.

RAY: Five feet.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: I thought this was a good puzzle for all the kids.

TOM: All the kids doing math problems?

RAY: Right, whose brains are a little bit creaky.

TOM: But, you know, and the only ones who would get this right would be the kids in aggie school.

RAY: Aggie school, right.

TOM: Right?

RAY: Yes.

TOM: All those mathematicians at MIT would get it wrong.

RAY: Right, and the kids in agricultural school would know --

TOM: Agricultural school would go, bingo.

RAY: -- that trees grow from the top. And the heart that was five feet above the ground is still five feet above the ground.

TOM: I was shocked to hear this. How can something grow from the top? There is no roots up there. There ain't no water up there.

RAY: There isn't no roots.

TOM: There isn't no roots up there. I mean, how can that be?

RAY: Well, it's one of those mysteries.

TOM: Huh? It is, huh?

RAY: The tree gets bigger in girth. But if a branch starts off at five feet above the ground, a carving, that's where it stays. Pretty much.

TOM: And it just adds to the top.

RAY: There you go.

TOM: To the top of what?

RAY: TO the top of the tree.

TOM: But what if you did this when the tree was one foot tall? And you carved something down at the very bottom that was 2 inches off the ground.

RAY: It would still be there.

TOM: It would still be there.

RAY: Yeah. I don't believe it either.

TOM: That sounds like bull to me.

RAY: Well, like I said, i don't really believe it either but, it's close enough.

TOM: Geez, just take my word for it. Wow.

RAY: And who's going to win our 10th anniversary Car Talk T-shirt this week?

TOM: I don't know. The winner is Father, ooh, Father Mark Burlani from the Sacred Heart Church in Park, Kansas. Padre.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]