An Ingenious Ride Home

RAY: What they simply did was they kept swapping batteries. So, when John's battery would run low because of his bad alternator, and was in danger of conking out and not being able to run the car, he'd take it out and put it in Uncle's car.

Uncle's good alternator would charge up the battery, and John would use the other battery.

They kept doing this, and they made it all the way back.

So who's our winner?

TOM: The winner is Blaine Bachman from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and for having his answer selected at random from among all the correct answers that we got, Blaine gets a $26 gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division of Cartalk.com, and with that certificate he can get a brand-new Car Talk unmarked bill carrier, which we admit looks an awful lot like a nice gym bag.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]