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enthusiast
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OP
enthusiast
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Posts: 390 |
I just read a riddle and I am not ablre to understand its answer.
Q. How many letters are there in the correct answer to this question?
A. Four. - Explanation: Four is the only number with the same amount of letters as the word it is from.
Can someone explain how the answer can be deduced?
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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very poorly worded; four is the only number, expressed as an English word, with the same number of letters as its value.
-joe (four has four (count 'em) letters) friday
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Joined: Nov 2007
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enthusiast
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OP
enthusiast
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very poorly worded; four is the only number, expressed as an English word, with the same number of letters as its value.
-joe (four has four (count 'em) letters) friday Thank you but it must be beyond my English. I still can not see how that answer is suggested by the question. I searched on google and the same phrasing is used repeadtedly except sometimes the word puzzle is used instead of question.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2002
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You have to figure out an answer that tells you how many letters are in the answer.
7 wouldn't work because the answer (seven) has 5 letters. The number of letters does not agree with the word.
5 has 4 letters (five) so it doesn't work.
The only number in which the word (the answer) tells you how many letters it has is four.
PS I can figure it out in reverse I would never have gotten it on my own.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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You mean like octobass? link
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I still can not see how that answer is suggested by the question. The classic riddle would often be obscurely, if not misleadingly, worded.
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Posts: 618
addict
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addict
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Posts: 618 |
Q. How many letters are there in the correct answer to this question?
A. 0
A. There are twenty-five letters.
A. One possible answer to this question is that there are fifty.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Q. How many letters are there in the correct answer to this question?
A. Four.
this is a self-referential construct, as are doc_comfort's examples.
Q. How many consonants are in the correct answer to this question?
A. one
or,
A. two
or,
A. three
this is a variation, of sorts, on the "this sentence" theme:
1. This sentence contains five words.
2. This sentence no verb.
3. This sentence is false.
-joe (autological) friday
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Q. How many consonants are in the correct answer to this question?
A. one
or,
A. two
or,
A. three
You'll want to be careful with this one. You might face the wrath of Geoff Pullum. He'll come down on you with both feet and a prepositional bush. Linguistically one has two consonants, two has one and three has two.
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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You might face the wrath of Geoff Pullum. He'll come down on you with both feet and a prepositional bush. -Craig Russell (from your link) 1. An alphabetic or phonetic element other than a vowel; an elementary sound of speech which in the formation of a syllable is combined with a vowel. Applied both to the sounds and to the letters (the latter being the historically prior use).
[OED2] - joe (bring it on, Geoff) friday
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