
Puzzler Answer, 12/20/97: Hum A Few Bars
RAY: OK, it's time to find out if my brother remembers last week's puzzler.
TOM: I certainly do.
RAY: Oh you do?
TOM: I even know the answer by the way. It has to do with the guy who goes into the library.
RAY: That's right. Wow. Here it is. Very few people know this, but we have a barber shop quartet at
the garage. We also have a barber shop. Even though we've got six guys. The reason it's a quartet is a
couple of the guys can't sing. So one of the guys decides he is going to go to the library and get a book
on how to sing. Use his tax dollars.
TOM: Why not?
RAY: But he is so bad he figures he has to start from square one so he figures if he can learn how to hum
first, then in fact he's got a shot at learning how to sing, right? Because if you hum, you carry a tune.
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. So anyway he goes to the library; he hasn't been to the library, and he doesn't
know anything about the Dewey Decimal System or card catalogs or anything. He walks around. He's
embarrassed to ask anything.
TOM: They don't use card catalogs anymore.
RAY: No.
TOM: But that's all right.
RAY: He doesn't know that.
TOM: He doesn't know that.
RAY: He walks around until he finds a book - because he's embarrassed to ask - that says How to Hum.
Perfect, he says.
TOM: What a deal.
RAY: Takes the book, sits down at a table, begins to read but there is nothing in it about singing, music,
or how to hum. What was this book that he pulled off the shelf. He just kind of wandered around and he
saw this book and said ooh!
TOM: Sure, there it was.
RAY: Just what I want.
TOM: This is for me. Yeah.
RAY: And...
TOM: And it happened to be one of the H's in the set of encyclopedia.
RAY: Exactly. H-O-W to H-U-M.
TOM: And in fact if he had gone far enough, he would have gotten to hum because it was the last thing
in the book.
RAY: Maybe.
TOM: But probably...
RAY: Didn't tell him how to.
TOM: No, it certainly didn't tell him how to.
RAY: What it was. Who's our winner this week?
TOM: Oh, you always spring that on me, and I always have to go...
RAY: You should be ready.
TOM: Ah, here it is. Our winner is Diane Konkel from Ft. Meyers, Florida. You got your answer
chosen from among the thousands of answers that we got this week that were correct, and you're going
to win our latest dog frisbee, which you can also use as an audio CD.