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Can You Solve This Old-Timey Riddle? #3

The riddle below is a century old—can you figure out the answer?

See if you can solve the riddle.
See if you can solve the riddle. | MirageC/Moment/Getty Images

James Gilchrist Lawson was a prolific Tennessee-born writer and Baptist minister who published a wide variety of books and essays throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to reference guides to the Bible, dissertations on the teachings of Jesus, and even several of his own hymns, Lawson compiled a vast number of secular anthologies of jokes, quotes, anecdotes and epigrams—and in 1924, published a landmark collection of The World’s Best Conundrums and Riddles of all Ages.

Lawson’s Riddles of all Ages contained hundreds of puzzles and word games, some of which, admittedly, were more contrived than others. The answer to the question “Why is a dog in an ice chest like a telegraph pole?”, for instance, is “because it is a purp-in-de-cooler (perpendicular)” (with perp standing in for pup). Thankfully, the simple riddle below isn’t quite as contrived as that, but it still requires no small amount of lateral thinking—can you figure out the answer?

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