Thanks for the comments. I thought about this week’s puzzler last night, and “eureka”, it can be solved exactly as stated on the Car Talk web site. The only hint I’ll give is that the sol’n is easier than last week’s puzzler.
Last week’s threw me for a loop. I thought and thought and finally found a pattern and then a sol’n which matched the sequence, but the sol’n I knew wasn’t the correct one, as the pattern was too complex. (My sol’n was 78; there’s a reason why 78 could be an answer; anybody else come up w/78?). Anyway, then when I heard the answer was 72, I was all-slapping-my-head-silly what a dummy I was for not thinking of it! Mental note: On these sequences, you can’t just look at the numbers themselves, you gotta look at their neighbors too.
This week’s puzzler is a good one. Think on it a while and you’ll likely get it – think what you need to know at the very minimum to find the average of a set of numbers – and I think you’ll figure it out.