Can You Solve This Old-Timey Riddle? #47

Nuts to Crack was the title of a collection of more than 400 punning riddles and word puzzles—subtitled Try One: You Can Crack Them with Your Head, and the Thinner Your Skull the Better—by the American author George Shorb. First published in 1902, the book was seemingly a considerable success in its day, running to its 15th edition by the following year.

Some of the puzzles in Shorb’s collection were little more than puns and jokes (“What is the dryest subject?” / “A mummy”), but others were genuinely puzzling, and took more than a little lateral thinking to figure out—including the riddle below. Can you work out what’s being described?

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