RAY: What did you expect it to be?

TOM: Thirty-seven, uh, thirty-eight dollars.

RAY: You're wrong. The answer is thirteen dollars and fifty cents.

Here's why.

All that was damaged was volume two, which is the volume in the middle. Now if you think about how books are on a shelf, you have volume one, all the way to the left, volume two is next to it to its right, and volume three is even farther to the right.

He says, "As I reached for them on the shelf I could see that mold had damaged every page and cover from the front of volume I, although that cover was undamaged, to the back cover of volume three, though that too was undamaged." So as the books are placed on the shelf, the cover of volume one is the closest thing of volume one to volume two.

TOM: It's on the right side when you put it in there.

RAY: Exactly. And the back cover of volume three is on the left side, it is also the closest thing to volume two.

TOM: So it's only volume two that's affected.

RAY: The reason it was $13.50 was that even though there were 2500 printed pages, there were on 1250 pages of actual paper because there's printing on both sides, so it's only a penny apiece to clean each page.

TOM: And two covers.

TOM: The winner is Karen German from Franklin, Tennessee.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]