Lately my Facebook feed has taken to showing me these fraudulent little puzzle-videos that are hardly videos at all, just static, five-second clips of a riddle without an answer. I love these videos very much, perhaps because I have never been very good at answering riddles to begin with, so the genre of all-cadence, no-substance riddles suits me very well.
One video, taken of an old white clock, is framed by the question “An adult is babysitting seven children. Half of the children are girls. How is this possible?” The first pinned comment, from the original poster, reads “I don’t get it!” followed by a puzzled-looking emoji.
“The babysitter is also their sibling.”
“3 boys…the 7th is the father”
“Two answers to this. The first is they are all girls and the second is the adult is the other’s older sibling”
“They are all girls. Half an apple doesn’t make the other half a banana. Half a cake is half of the whole cake. 7 girls, half of them are female, as is the other half”
“At least 4 of the children are girls, perhaps more. It only specifies half of them are girls, it doesn’t say that they other half are not.”
“Maybe the babysitter has her own child with her too, making total children up to 8 (doesn’t count as babysitting if it’s your own)
“This is a farce, because the only “correct” answer still isn’t correct because you can’t halve seven children (legally). It’s been written by someone to whom clicks are more important than intelligence.”
The video is a close-up of a linoleum carpet. “Solve this: Why is an island like the letter T?” followed once again by the same puzzled-looking emoji, and again the injunction, “Solve this hard riddle.”
Answers have included:
“They want everyone work together”
Lots of “T is in the middle of water”
“Not ALL Shape Like The Letter T In Fact Name 5. Shape Like The Letter T”
“more under the surface than above T.”
“Everyone, Everywhere Wants To Go To An Island With Water Around It. No Man Or Woman Is An Island Unto Themselves. Keep Giving John 316 and John 317.”
“Because there is only one in water.”
“[Spoken] No one can solve this task. [Written] A mother has 4 children. The names are north, west and east. What is the name of her last child. I’ll be checking the comments soon!”
“Different, but ok…I see people putting a name, but there was no question so…”
“I’m thinking the name is ‘What’ because it is not in a form of a question.”
“They did it wrong. Its supposed to be "Your mother has _ children ...their names are _, _, and _ ...what's the last child's name..?" Which in that case it would be your name so for me it would be Sienna (my first name)”
“...it’s ‘Your’ mother...the answer is you, you’re the last kid. The question asked is like me asking "i made a sandwich with cheese, mayo and pickles. What meat did I use?"
“It’s whether you start with
YOUR MOTHER OR
MY MOTHER
OR
A's MOTHER...
BUT FOR NOW TELL ME THE NAME OF THE FOURTH CHILD.”
I think these make at least as much sense as a cryptic crossword. I’ll be checking the comments soon.
This pretty much sums up my online experience.