Last’s weeks puzzler on Car Talk seemed almost relevant to this class. Perhaps a bit of a stretch.

We needed a new sign above our garage and Tommy decided to hire a sign painter for the job, instead of turning Crusty loose with a can of spray paint, like the last time.

He instructed the sign painter to paint a sign which simply said, ‘Click and Clack’s Garage.’ Those four words.

When it was finally finished and hung in place, Tommy stood there and carefully studied the new sign. After several minutes he spoke: ‘I don’t like it. Something’s not right.’

‘What’s wrong?’ asked the sign painter. ‘Did I misspell something or use improper punctuation?’

‘No, it’s nothing like that.’

Tommy then uttered a sentence in which he used one of the words on that sign five times in a row. There were other words in that sentence, but one of the words in that sign was used five times in a row. And here’s the interesting part: the sentence made sense and, furthermore, it explained what was wrong with that sign.

And the question very simply is, what’s the sentence?

The thing about the answer is that it requires mixing the language with the metalanguage, so I’m not sure I really buy the answer, but it is…

“The spacing between ‘Click’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘Clack’ is not equal.”

Not quite the same as “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo” (Buffalo that buffalo buffalo in turn buffalo other buffalo).