Two little cubes… and too many numbers.

RAY: Well, you have two cubes with six faces each, so that's 12 faces. Let's see what we need. Each cube needs a one, right? Because you have to be able to express the 11th.

TOM: And two twos.

RAY: Right. You need one three, right? After all, there's no 33rd of the month. But each cube also needs a zero.

Let's look what we got so far. We've got one cube at zero, one, two, three. That's four faces. And another cube has zero, one, two. So I've used seven faces, I've got five left. So I need to have a four and a five, a six, a seven, an eight and a nine.

Oops—that's 13 faces, and we only have 12 to use.

TOM: You've got to turn the six upside down.

RAY: Exactly. So, for example, one cube could say, zero, one, two, four, seven, eight, and the other could say zero, one, two, three, five, nine or six.

The six and the nine are redundant. Cute, huh?

Do we have a winner?

TOM: Of course! The winner is James Dawson from Crane, Texas. And for having his answer selected at random from among all the correct answers that we got James gets a 26-dollar gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at cartalk.com with which James can get a combination Car Talk baseball jersey/dipstick wiper. Super absorbent cotton makes it perfect for both applications, we think, and we know which one it's more likely to be used for.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]