RAY: Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's puzzler. And here it is. This old geezer passes away and leaves his entire estate to his three ne'er-do-well nephews, Chip, Skip, and Nunzio. Now, he'd spent most of his money on women and wine and squandered the rest so the only thing he had left was 17 cars. So the sleazeball lawyer and the three deadbeat nephews, Chip, Skip, and Nunzio, show up at the carriage house to look over the cars. And the lawyer says, let's see here. Your uncle left a third of the cars to Chip, half of the cars to Skip, and one-ninth of the cars to Nunzio. They look at him and say, "What do we do now? There are 17 cars. How are we supposed to divide them up?" They're just about to get out the power saw when who should waltz in but our old retainer, Crusty.
TOM: Yeah!
RAY: Crusty overhears their conversation and proposes a solution. The lawyer and the three inheritors say, this is genius! This is --
TOM: Get a life?.
RAY: The question is, what did Crusty propose and, more importantly, why did it work?
TOM: Wait a minute now. When was the, one-third --
RAY: A third, a half, and a ninth.
TOM: And a ninth which is, oh, this is less than one.
RAY: There you go.
TOM: Because it's four ninths plus a half.
RAY: Yeah.
TOM: You take four and a half ninths.
RAY: So the first guy, who inherited half the cars, Chip, is supposed to get eight and a half cars.
TOM: Yeah.
RAY: Right? The second guy is going to get five and two-thirds cars. And Nunzio is going to get stuck with a car and eight-ninths.
TOM: Yep. I've owned that one. Yeah.
RAY: So Crusty comes along and he says, "Look it, guys, I'll lend you my '52 Studebaker." And they said, "What do we need that for?" Well, now they have 18 cars.
TOM: Now they've got -
RAY: So Chip says, "Oh, I'll take half of those." That's nine cars.
TOM: He takes nine.
RAY: Skip says, "I'll take a third of those." That's six cars.
TOM: Six.
RAY: And Nunzio says, "I'll take my one-ninth."
TOM: That's two.
RAY: That's two, which conveniently adds up to 17 cars. Crusty gets his '52 Studebaker back --
TOM: And everything's done.
RAY: -- And everyone's happy. The question is, huh? Wow! Well, the reason it works is that, if you are a stew like my brother, you'll notice that half plus a third plus a ninth do not add up to one.
TOM: Yeah. [Oh?].
RAY: Well, he originally had 18 cars; that's the truth.
TOM: And one of them -
RAY: No, Crusty stole it.
TOM: It was a '52 Studebaker.
RAY: But because they don't add up to one, in fact, when each gets his nine or six or two cars, it's actually more than the old man wanted to give each in his will.
TOM: Yeah, but it does work out proportionately.
RAY: It, so to speak.
TOM: At least.
RAY: And they didn't have to get the power saw out. Pretty good. So who's our winner?
TOM: The winner is Larry Molette from Billings, Montana, and for having his answer selected at random from the trash compactor full of correct answers that we got, Larry is going to get a $25 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at the Car Talk section of the cars.com Web site. And with that gift certificate, Larry can get the hottest gift of this Christmas season.
RAY: Really, what do we do? Hook up with Victoria's Secret or something?
TOM: No, no, no. The hottest gift of the year, according to those who know, is the Car Talk Car Tunes CD, the "Car Talk Compendium of Disrespectful Car Songs." Boy, that's it.
RAY: And do you know why it's the hottest gift of this Christmas season?
TOM: Yeah, yeah, it's because it's got reverential songs about Peugeots and Plymouth Horizons, I think.
RAY: Well, no, because it's cheaper than a Sony Play Station. Anyway, we'll have a brand new puzzler and I really, I haven't figured out which puzzler to use yet. It could be one from -
TOM: The string series?
RAY: It could be one from the string series or maybe the Ted O'Brien series. We don't even know. Anyway, that'll be coming up in the third half of the show today so try to stick it out until then, at least. In the meantime, if you have a question about your car or anything, give us a call. The number's 888-Car-Talk, that's 888-227-8255. Hello, you're on Car Talk.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
