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You may have seen this riddle make its way across the Internet over the last few months. I feel that it’s probably akin to the “gry” riddle, where the original meaning was skewed due to changes from source-to-source. Anyway, I’ve seen people convinced that the answer to this riddle is time, air, God, pressure, and a few other things. Some have quoted a suspicious-looking poem that it supposedly references.
What’s worse, there’s an obviously bogus introduction that claims that “97 percent of Harvard graduates couldn’t solve this, but 84 percent of kindergarten students answered it within six minutes.” That’s caused many to believe that the answer is simply no. While the whole statistical analysis deal is almost certainly fake, it’s easy to assume that educated types would not give up on the puzzle, while kindergarten students would be more apt to admit defeat and expect to be told the answer.
The point is, now it’s time to give it the mental_floss treatment. What’s the answer to (or the story behind) this riddle?
I turn polar bears white
And I will make you cry.
I make guys have to pee
And girls comb their hair.
I make celebrities look stupid
And normal people look like celebrities.
I turn pancakes brown
And make your champagne bubble.
If you squeeze me, I’ll pop.
If you look at me, you’ll pop.
Can you guess the riddle?
Yeah, the fact that it ends with “Can you guess the riddle?” instead of “Who am I?” makes this one smell a lot like the “-gry” puzzle.
See xkcd comic #169. In the Logic Puzzles section of the xkcd forums, any intentionally misleading puzzle is just called a 169, after that comic’s number.
posted by Hodge on 7-24-2008 at 8:31 am
your eyes?
posted by kbar on 7-24-2008 at 8:46 am
Pressure.
As in evolutionary, emotional, bladder, peer, social, applied, pressurized CO2, air.
posted by Amy S. on 7-24-2008 at 9:15 am
The Sun. It covers most of the clues in round about ways.
posted by Chris G. on 7-24-2008 at 9:29 am
is it the sun?
Light from the sun gives color, sunburns make your cry, sunrise causes us to wake up, guys need to pee, girls comb their hair in the morning and etc..
posted by Sam on 7-24-2008 at 9:32 am
The answer is “no.”
No, I cannot guess the riddle. The kindergartenders recognize that they can’t answer it, whereas the Harvard graduates overthink it and assume that there must be a possible answer.
posted by Katie on 7-24-2008 at 10:11 am
I would say it’s age except for the popping clues ….
posted by mor on 7-24-2008 at 10:26 am
I vote Amy is right. :3
posted by Stephanie A on 7-24-2008 at 10:47 am
I sent this to a few co-workers to see what they could make of it… Here’s one of the responses:
It would appear the riddle was reverse engineered from this poem about ‘time’ (which I happened to be reading the other night while I was retiring in my study). Also, the last parts are taken from a separate riddle where the answer is “a bubble.” If you squeeze a bubble, of course it pops. If you look at a bubble, you see your reflection, thus, you pop. This is the hardest riddle in the world because it’s the most ambiguous and
The time has come,
winter is here
and those yellow bears disapear.
The time has past
as man looks back with a sigh
and a tear in his eye.
As time is held
boys cross their legs
but of course the toilet begs
As time marches on
Girls loose their blush
and swap a comb for their brush
As time passes
For those held high
their end is nigh
As time catches up
Everyone is equal
when we get to the final sequal
As time turns
Without it we have flour and water
With it we have breakfast for my daughter
As time revolves
How does one turn water and wine
into something so fine
As time runs out
The more in a minute you try and squeeze
the less you can do with ease.
As time ticks
All the time that has past
man cannot comprehand something so vast.
posted by Pam on 7-24-2008 at 11:00 am
The answer to the riddle is life. without life none of these things would happen. The riddle perhaps is a metaphor for life. many things that seem unrelated yet are interconnected.
posted by Chris on 7-24-2008 at 11:03 am
The answer is ‘No’. There are several variations of this on the web.
posted by Mike on 7-24-2008 at 11:03 am
The onion?
posted by Morphy on 7-24-2008 at 11:52 am
so is there an answer?
posted by casey on 7-24-2008 at 1:21 pm
How about “Yes,” because yes, I can guess, but I sure as hell won’t be able to answer it correctly.
posted by Heather on 7-24-2008 at 2:31 pm
The sun…
The light from the sun reflects off the polar bears’ fur, making them white.
The Sun magazine, I believe, is filled with celeb gossip.
posted by tess on 7-24-2008 at 2:40 pm
If the correct answer is “no,” then you just solved the riddle. So wouldn’t the answer be “yes”?
posted by LE on 7-24-2008 at 8:27 pm
The last line should be considered completely separate of the riddle itself. I don’t mean to write this as a cop-out, but here’s my reasoning out in the open:
After reading up to the second-to-last line, the riddle itself is over. The question at the end begins an entirely new thought. Considering the question elicits two possible answers - No, as in I cannot answer the riddle, and therefore would not attempt to do so, or Yes, as in I can in fact answer it. Answering the riddle would require a preemptive prompt such as ‘What is the answer?’, which of course is another line of thought.
In other words, ‘What’s the answer to this riddle?’ and ‘Can you guess the riddle?’ are two completely isolated questions. Quite frankly, I cannot answer the riddle and would respond No to the last line, but someone who could answer it would answer Yes and move onto the next line of questioning posed by Sandy here.
By the way, I’ve been drinking (and yes, I do focus more on my typing grammar when I have a buzz on.
posted by Joe on 7-24-2008 at 11:30 pm
If the last line were not to be considered part of the riddle, as Joe suggests, then why is it so awkward? If the point of the riddle were simply to guess who the “I” was, the last line would be, “Who am I?” The unusual construction draws attention to itself and makes it part of the riddle.
posted by Heather on 7-25-2008 at 7:23 am
the answer is “you”
posted by Ian on 7-25-2008 at 10:52 am
The answer is yoursenses.
It makes you see polar bears as white, it makes you feel sadness, it makes you digest food (and excrete it later), it makes girls subject to social stigmas based on appearance.
It makes us see celebrities as who they really are and regular people as how special they really are, and lets you see the brownness of pancakes and taste the bubbles in champagne. If you hurt someone’s “feelings”, I’ll hurt, and if you look at them, deep inside of my SOUL, you’ll die.
I know, it doesn’t always fit, but I like it.
posted by Alec on 7-29-2008 at 10:06 pm
The answer is No.
The question is “CAN YOU SOLVE the riddle” not “WHAT IS THE ANSWER to the riddle”
So either you can solve it or you cannot solve it and the answer is no.
There is no one thing that does all those things. Why do you suppose children can answer the question in less then 5 mins where well educated adults talk hours and discuss the riddle in forums. Children quite simply admit they cannot answer it where adults will look for the answer and not read the question
posted by Stevw on 8-6-2008 at 1:01 pm
I love how both the Onion and XKCD were mentioned (two of my favorite sites).
Any generic magic-eight-ball answer would, in some obscure fashion, be acceptable.
posted by Will on 8-12-2008 at 11:50 am