This was on car talk the other day. Two guys are standing at the back of a ferry. They cannot see the cars well enough to read the license plates. They make a bet about how many cars are automatic and how many are manual transmission.
They didn’t say exactly the nature of the bet. I believe they each picked a number.
When the ferry docked and people got into their cars and started the engines the two guys immediately knew who had won the bet.
The captain was standing next to them (supposedly) and was dumbfounded. How did they know who was right?
That’s the riddle.
My only guess is that it has something to do with the breaklights. Any other ideas?
Backup lights. When you shift a manual into first gear, you go straight from neutral into first (or maybe you parked in first to begin with). With an auto tranny you have to pass through reverse to get to drive, which will momentarily light up your white backup lights.
But what if some of the manual tranny cars were parked with the shifter in “reverse”? Not uncommon. Either that’s not the answer or it’s a flawed riddle.
if that was the case, when the car was started the backup lights would be on right away. If a car is parked in “park”, the backup lights wouldn’t be on right when you start the car, but would flash for a moment while you shift from P through R and N to D
And the Puzzler answers are posted on the Car Talk web site. CookingWithGas got it right.
If a manual transmission car was parked with the gear in R, the backup light will turn on right away and stay lit for a while. Then the brake lamps would go on, and the backup light would go off. On an automatic, the brake lamp would go on and then the backup light would flash very briefly.
OK, I didn’t pay enough attention and missed the “ferry” portion of the question. Cars on a ferry would most likely be driven on forward (from the back of the ferry) and driven off forward (from the front of the ferry). Probably no need to park to manual’s in reverse.
My guess would be that the guy with the correct answer was Superman and he got the right answer by using his X-Ray vision to check out what kind of transmission was in each car.
My reasoning?
Simple, picture twenty one cars parked three abreast, seven deep. Just where are going to stand that you can see all 21 taillight assemblies to determine if the brake lights come on? Standing behind the cars would require X-ray vision inorder to see all 21 sets of brake lights.
Well, some ferries do provide a very high vantage point for looking at the cars…
Anyway it was a “recycled” puzzler, and I liked the original version better. It went something like:
“A guy is driving home and as he approaches his house, he sees a suspicous person get in a car and drive away. It turns out he was a burgler. He tells the police the make and model of the burgler’s car, and the fact that the car had a distinctive dent in the rear bumper. A few days later the police tells him they found a vehicle matching the description, and asks hime to come and take a look. He gets to the police station, looks into the window of the car they found, and says ‘no, this isn’t the car.’ Why?”
The answer, of course, is that he saw the backup light flash when the burgler started his car. When he looked inside the car found by the police, he saw it was a stickshift.
