The Self-Adjusting Mystery Clock

RAY: The hint I gave is that Mark said he didn't have one of these when he lived in Kansas.

TOM: Yeah, I said to myself, "In your house on the Cape you have a tide clock. "

RAY: Right, and the tide doesn't care whether it's Daylight Savings Time or not. The tide is the tide is the tide.

TOM: You have that clock in your kitchen, but what is a tide clock?

RAY: It tells you when it's high tide.

TOM: How does it know?

RAY: It's an analog clock that has only one hand, the hour hand. It runs slower than a normal clock because the tides don't come at six-hour intervals. High tides are anywhere from 12 hours and two minutes apart to 12 hours and 50 minutes apart.

TOM: And you certainly don't have to change it when they change all the other clocks.

RAY: Exactly. Do we have a winner?

TOM: The winner this week is Jane Douglas from Carbondale, Colorado. And for having her answer selected at random from among all the correct answers that we got Jane's going to get a 26-dollar gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at cartalk.com, where she can get our brand-new CD collection of calls about cars and animals.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]