RAY: Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and, duh, the answer to last week's Puzzler. This Puzzler was sent to us by a kid who gave us a phony baloney story about being in a hospital bed and how we had to use this Puzzler because he wasn't long for this world. Then he wrote us again four years later and used the same story. Anyway, here's his Puzzler. I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was good the first time. I just lost it.

TOM: It just didn't migrate up to the top of the pile. It happens.

RAY: It happens. He says, on the hottest day of the summer, my mother was driving her decrepit '88 Corolla from New York City to Philly with her significant other. They were going to a wedding, and the bride had asked them to courier a shipment of gourmet frozen sorbet centerpieces from a little-known sorbet emporium in Queens.

TOM: Yeah!

RAY: Most people don't know that Queens is the headquarters of all the sorbet emporiums.

TOM: No kidding?

RAY: Anyway, at the emporium, they loaded a crate packed with sorbet centerpieces into the back seat of the car. The merchant warned them that they had three hours before the sorbet started to melt.

TOM: Sid the Sorbet King.

RAY: Said the Sorbet King.

TOM: From Queens.

RAY: Yeah. Philly is two hours away. So, flushed with the urgency of their charge, they set out. All went well until they ran into bumper-to-bumper traffic heading over the 59th Street Bridge. You knew that was going to happen, right?

TOM: Of course.

RAY: Significant other suddenly begins showing symptoms of cardiac distress.

TOM: Uh!

RAY: You know, shortness of breath.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: Dizziness, et cetera. And mom changed course to New York Hospital. The next thing she knew, a policeman was reviving her. She had lost consciousness and crashed into a guardrail, but was miraculously uninjured. She recovered quickly and drove significant other to the hospital.

TOM: Mmmm.

RAY: You with me?

TOM: I'm with you.

RAY: A full cardiac workup showed no medical problems, so they set off again, having lost an hour.

TOM: Whew! They're in trouble.

RAY: Significant other had a few other rough moments as they passed through the Lincoln Tunnel, but he seemed to have recovered on the Jersey Turnpike. The story has a happy ending. They made it to the wedding with moments to spare and without further incident. The sorbet was a smashing success. The question is: what happened? And you have all the facts. You don't need to, you think you may have all the facts. You don't have all the facts. You're missing one important piece of information.

TOM: Yeah, but I do know that the hot summer day had a lot to do with it.

RAY: Indeed it did, because the Sorbet King had packed these little sorbets, these centerpieces, in dry ice.

TOM: Ah! Ah!

RAY: And dry ice, as you may not know...

TOM: I do know. I'm a chemical engineer by trade!

RAY: I was speaking to our audience.

TOM: Oh.

RAY: To the other person that's listening. Is solidified carbon dioxide.

TOM: How do they do that?

RAY: They squeeze it a lot. And as it sublimates from a solid into a gas, it displaced, in this case, the oxygen that was in the car.

TOM: In the car, because they had the windows up and the air conditioner on, probably.

RAY: Because it was what? A hot day.

TOM: It was a hot summer day.

RAY: Indeed. And of course, significant other began to show symptoms of cardiac arrest because...

TOM: He couldn't breathe!

RAY: And of course...

TOM: You do have shortness of breath if you're breathing in CO2.

RAY: And Mumsy crashed into the guardrail for the same reason.

TOM: Sure. Passed out.

RAY: Of course, as soon as the policeman came and opened the door...

TOM: Ha!

RAY: ...oxygen rushed in, and by the time they got the significant other to the hospital, he was all right, too, because he had -- what? -- started breathing again.

TOM: Yeah.

RAY: Who's our winner, Tommy?

TOM: Wow! That's a great one!

RAY: By the way, David Horowitz sent that in. Good work, David!

TOM: David. I hope he's still alive!

RAY: I'm sure he is.

TOM: The winner this week is Sarah E. Ice. Ice. I-C-E.

RAY: How appropriate!

TOM: My God! How appropriate! CO2! Dry ice!

RAY: That's probably why she got it.

TOM: Sarah E. Ice from Stratford, Connecticut.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]