Monday, June 8, 2015

The Puzzler

For all those of you that are fans of Car Talk. Here's a Puzzler for you

Puzzler:

I was sitting at the traffic lights today next to a young guy in a car with way better acceleration than mine. It's obvious that he wants to be first off the lights. But I beat him. Easy. (Of course he then passes me a few yards further up as he keeps on accelerating, but whatever.)

He was not on the phone or texting. In fact he was watching the light. I didn't run the light, it was green when I went, and because he was revving a bit, I'm assuming that he had a manual (stick shift) transmission like me and we were both in gear and feathering the clutch.

Is my reaction time way better than his? Probably not, seeing as he looked alot younger than me.

So how did I beat him?




3 comments:

Mac said...

Because he was posturing and didn't actually think you'd take him up on his challenge.

gurume said...

Because he was waiting to react to the light turning green, and you were reacting to the light becoming not red.

Maija said...

Gurume - You win the prize :-)

I was indeed watching the cross traffic light turn yellow, and having familiarity with time interval between the cross light turning red, and my side going green (from having paid attention in the past through the same light) I had already predicted the 'go' and thus beat him easily.

In OODA loop terms. I was OODA even before he was OO.