Tim and Jethro's Pump-Side Wager

RAY: Tim and Jethro were happy to have their jobs at the new self-serve gas station in town. And, since the Farmer's Almanac had predicted this to be the coldest winter since the last ice age, they were happy to be working indoors, while the customers pumped their own gas.

This station had a video camera for each of the pumps, and a TV monitor that would show the rear of everyone's vehicles as soon as they pulled up to the pumps.

When the boredom of their jobs finally set in, Tim and Jethro began playing a little game. The game involved trying to figure out which customers had pulled up to a pump with the fuel door on the wrong side-- that is, facing away from the pump.

Now, they couldn't see the cars pull into the gas station. The video cameras were only aimed at the back of the vehicles. So, there was no time during which they could see the side of a vehicle where the fuel door was located. They could only see the vehicle after it was in position to refuel.

They had to make their bets before the driver shut off the key and exited the vehicle-- before he dope slapped himself for pulling in on the wrong side.

Jethro was correct 99 percent of the time. Tim was correct about 50 percent of the time, because he was just guessing.

What did Jethro know that enabled him to tell when a driver had pulled up to the pump with the fuel door facing the wrong way?
 

Think you know? Drop Ray a note!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Principal Fix

RAY: There's a high school election for senior class president, and there are three kids running, Tom, Tad, and Tim. As luck would have it they each get exactly the same number of votes: One. There's a lot of apathy in that particular school I guess. Anyway the principal calls Tom, Tad and Tim into his office and says, "Look guys, we could have another election but there's a pretty good chance that the count's going to come out exactly the same. So let's just throw each of your names into a hat, and I'll pull one out, and that'll be the winner, OK?"

Well they all agree. Sure. So he takes a clean sheet, you know, of plain white paper, eight and a half by eleven, and he folds it into thirds, and then like teachers often do, holding the paper on the sharp edge of his desk he tears the paper so that three pieces are exactly or pretty much exactly the same size. He hands each kid a piece and says, "Write your name here." And just to make sure it's on the up and up, he says, "Guys, you can blindfold me and I'm going to hold the hat. We're going to put the three names in a hat, and I'm going to hold the hat above my head and I'm going to reach in and pull out the winner's name."

Now the principal wants Tad to win because the other two kids are knuckleheads and he thinks, "If either one of these kids becomes president the school is going down, and I'm going to lose my job." So the question is how does the principal fix it so Tad wins?

RAY: Well, the principal simply tore the sheet into three exactly the same size pieces, but he gave the middle piece to Tad of course. And it had two factory edges and two rough edges. And the other pieces which came from not the middle but the top and the bottom had three factory edges and one torn edge. So when he reached in and felt the piece with the two long sides that were rough, he knew that that was the one that had Tad's name on it, and Tad won the election.