The Striped Bass Fishing Competition

RAY: They caught no fish on the first day, and that's what throws people off.

Then, on day two they caught three, and then six, and then nine, and then 12. So they caught 12 fish in the last day, if you add up 12 and nine and six and three, it adds up to 30.

TOM: See what I've been playing with all this time is --

RAY: You've been playing with nothing. You didn't remember the puzzler until eight seconds ago.

TOM: No, no, I've been wondering, why would you want to have only one person instead of two? Can't two people catch twice as many fish as one?

RAY: That was just obfuscation and declarification. You could solve this algebraically, by the way, by saying, " X equals the number of fish caught the first day, plus X plus three is the next day, and X plus six, and so on…. Equals 30. You come up with five X equals the zero.

Who's our winner?

TOM: The winner is Stewart Portner from Coral Springs, Florida, and for having his answer selected at random from among all the correct answers that we got, Stewart will get a 26-dollar gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at cartalk.com, with which he can get our new CD, 'Once Upon A Car Fire, The Greatest Car Talk Stories Ever Told.'

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]