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/or the answer to last week's puzzler. And this came from a fellow named Melvin Anderson, and I'm going to read it just the way he sent it in. And he refers to himself in the third person. Melvin had been briefing the boss at a staff meeting since he'd arrived at the office, too busy in fact for even a cup of coffee. Worse, he'd skipped breakfast that morning because he got up late and got dressed in a hurry and sped off to the office in his '65 Mustang convertible. Naturally, the top was up because it's January. It's cold. Gloves, you know, the whole bit.
TOM: Mmm-hmm, yeah.
RAY: Anyway, he'd been feeling pangs of hunger all morning. And when he finally finished his busy meeting, he glanced at his brand-new digital watch which he had just gotten for Christmas and he says, "Yikes, no wonder I'm hungry," says Melvin, "it's 12:01, lunch time. Whoopie!" So Melvin hurriedly dons his coat, hat and gloves and races out the rear entrance of the building. He heads for the diner across the street and he darts between traffic lanes, parked cars, and he falls into the doorway of the lunch counter there, and the door's locked.
TOM: What?
RAY: He says, "You've got to be kidding."
TOM: That's what he really said? ?? what did he really say? Come on, tell us.
RAY: And there's a sign that s --
TOM: Tell us what he really says.
RAY: And there's a sign that says, "Closed, Open at 11:00 A.M." Huh?
TOM: Oh. Somebody's sick maybe.
RAY: He rechecked his watch, which was working fine. It was brand new. He had just gotten it for Christmas, and discovered why the lunch counter was closed. What did he discover? Tommy knows.
TOM: Yeah, I got it right there.
RAY: He put his watch on upside down. So when it read 12:01 and he dashed out of the building, it was really --
TOM: It was 10:21.
RAY: -- 10:21.
TOM: Cool.
RAY: Pretty, pretty good. You dope, Melvin.
TOM: Well --
RAY: Anyway, do we have a winner?
TOM: Yeah. The winner is Clayton Dodge from Orono, Maine, home of the University of Maine as we know it.
RAY: That's a crossword puzzle word all the time.
TOM: Oh. No one's ever even heard of Orono. If you don't do the crossword puzzle, then no one even, Orono maybe doesn't even exist.
RAY: I don't think it exists.
TOM: It only exists as a crossword puzzle.
RAY: It's like Ames, Iowa.
TOM: And for having his answer selected at random from the ?? full of correct answers that we got, Clayton's going to get a $25 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at the Car Talk section of Cars.com. And with that gift certificate, what can he do? Get a copy of our strong smelling, I mean strong selling, strong selling Car Talk Car Tunes CD, "The Car Talk Compendium of Disrespectful Car Songs." Wow.
RAY: Anyway, we'll have a brand-new, I'm going to use one of the, from the black and white hat series.
TOM: Oh.
RAY: That puzzler will be coming up in the third half. 888-CAR-TALK is the number which also happens to be 888-BAS-VALK. Hello, you're on Car Talk.
[ Car Talk Puzzler ]
