Mental Floss

Can You Solve This Old-Timey Riddle? #48

This riddle dates back to the 1903—can you figure out the answer?
ByPaul Anthony Jones|
Can you figure it out?
Can you figure it out? | MirageC/Moment/Getty Images

The turn-of-the-last-century author Dean Rivers published several books of puzzles and riddles, one of the largest of which was a 1903 anthology of more than a thousand brainteasers called Conundrums, Riddles and Puzzles.

Like many of Rivers’s books, Conundrums contained just as many groanworthy puns and jokes as it did riddles (and even some of his riddles are so strained that solving them would be nigh-on impossible). English grammar, he explains, is like gout because gout is “torture” and grammar is “taught yer,” while 2 times 10 is equal to 2 times 11 because two 11s make “twenty too.” Thankfully, the riddle below is on the more solvable side of things. Can you work it out?

Take Our Latest Quizzes:

Home/QUIZZES