Frank Morgan

Car Talk Saturday, May 26, announced me as the winner of the Puzzler. As they did on Saturday, January 25, 2004. For the same puzzle. Which I never answered. At that time I wrote to my congratulatory friends:

Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 08:21:35 -0500
Dear Friends,

It was great to hear from you about a curious announcement on Car Talk yesterday of my winning the Puzzler, curious since I did not even submit an answer to that particular question! I have six theories, successively less plausible:

1. They took my name from a list from an earlier question.
2. Someone else submitted the answer under my name.
3. It was another Frank Morgan, and they took my address from an earlier list or he lives in some other Williamstown or (least likely) he lives here in Williamstown MA but I don’t know about him.
4. I did answer that question but I forgot.
5. This is a joke on me by you and other friends across the country. (I haven’t heard the show or anything from Car Talk directly.)
6. Alien conspiracy.

It turns out that for scheduling reasons CarTalk always announces winners from previous Puzzlers. Here’s the explanation I got by email:

Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 11:13:40 -0500
From: David Greene <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: I won a Puzzler I didn’t enter?
To: [email protected]

Dear Frank,

As much as we’d like to encourage you to believe all your friends are playing a joke on you, the actual explanation is #1. Because different station air our show at different times, and some delay airing a show for up to a week, to give everyone a fair shot, the “Winner” we announce on a show is actually someone who submitted a correct answer to an earlier puzzler…in your case, it was the coin weighing puzzler. Unfortunately, it sometimes results in an innocent party being implicated in a uh, “controversial” answer, and for that we apologize.

But, you should receive your gift certificate sometime in the next 6-8 weeks.

Sincerely,

David Greene
Associate Producer
Car Talk

So I did win! And that and a little cash got me a CarTalk vest.
Saturday May 27, 2012, was apparently just a repeat of an old show.