Gary C. sent me this riddle which has been doing the rounds on email for quite a while, though I had never seen it before. As Gary pointed out, the interesting thing about this is not whether it really is a Paul Harvey riddle (I have no clue), or even the riddle itself. It's the claim that 80% of kindergarten kids got the answer while 83% of Stanford graduates were unable to. Instead of trying to track down whether or not a group of Stanford graduates ever has been tested with this riddle, I thought I'd do the next best thing. Take an unscientific poll of Museum of Hoaxes readers to see how many of you are able to figure out the answer right away vs. aren't able to. That'll give a rough approximation of the percentage of (presumably over-kindergarten age) people able to solve the riddle, assuming people answer the poll honestly.
I have to admit that I couldn't get the answer. I finally gave up and googled for the answer.
If you've seen the riddle before and already know the answer, then base your response to the poll on the first time you ever saw the riddle. Did you figure out the answer immediately? If you were in kindergarten when you first were given the riddle, then don't respond to the poll.
I put the answer in a link below for those people, like myself, unable to figure it out.
Paul Harvey RIDDLE:
When asked this riddle, 80% of kindergarten kids got the answer, compared to 17% of Stanford University seniors.
What is greater than God, More evil than the devil, The poor have it, The rich need it, And if you eat it, you'll die?
Send this to 10 people and then press shift and you will get the answer.
P.S. You won't believe this, but this really does give you the answer!!!!
The Answer
Comments
The "riddle" is stupid, therefore it probably did originate with Paul Harvey. Time to buy an eight-pound Oreck vacuum and a Bose Wave radio. Page two!
If the riddle was reworded to start with the rich and poor business, I bet the kids wouldn't know either.
...I first saw this about 6 years ago...I didn't know anything about God, and I still figured it out after reading it through just once.
It's a riddle. Stop picking it apart and just admit you don't get it.
You can't rephrase a riddle...the whole point of a riddle is in it's phrase.
I used to listen to Paul Harvey with great interest years ago. Then one day he told a story about something that happened in my area. He got all the facts screwed up and from then on he lost credibility with me.
Before then I just thought of him as some guy on the radio station my mother listened to who told harmless little stories. Now I can't think of him as anything other than a monster.
Anyhow, it looks like only about one out of three readers guessed the riddle, so, Alex, I apologize for my earlier comment that 95% of dogs would be able to figure it out.
That still leaves us with the question of whether there really is a higher percentage of kindergarteners than Stanford students who can get the right answer. Until somebody tells me who tested this and when, and lets me see their data, I think I'll assume that that claim was just made up out of thin air.
If the question was "What's North of Santa's workshop", I don't think people who didn't get it would be apt to say "Oh, well I don't believe in Santa, so naturally I wouldn't have figured it out".
"I don't think you need to believe in God to figure out this puzzle, you only have to understand the popular concept of God. I'm an athiest and I think it's a cop out (of course, I didn't figure it out, but I blame that on my being an intellectual light weight)"
OK, point well-taken, but I DO think that the thrust of the "riddle" implies a belief in God--kind of like "Well, EVERYONE believes in God and everyone knows that NOTHING is greater than God so you should be able to figure this out immediately."
As for Paul Harvey, he's been caught numerous times airing stories that had NO basis in fact. Check out snopes.com; I believe there's a few examples of him doing that there. He's hardly a credible source of information.
"OK, point well-taken, but I DO think that the thrust of the "riddle" implies a belief in God--kind of like "Well, EVERYONE believes in God and everyone knows that NOTHING is greater than God so you should be able to figure this out immediately.""
Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. I could see kindergardeners (who spent lots of time in sunday school) getting it without much thought.
"As for Paul Harvey, he's been caught numerous times airing stories that had NO basis in fact. "
Paul Harvey is the radio equivilant of the Weekly World News, only people take him seriously. Sad, isn't it?
"Paul Harvey is the radio equivilant of the Weekly World News, only people take him seriously. Sad, isn't it?"
Well, there's a tendency for people to think that if something is big or has been around for a while that it MUST be legitimate. I confess to falling into that logical trap at times myself.
When I catch myself thinking like that, I remind myself that Enron was the sixth-largest company in America at one point. It doesn't really follow logically, but we all tend to think that an entity that large just COULDN'T be fraudulent. Uh, guess again. Paul Harvey is the Enron of radio commentators (with Limbaugh right behind him). Big does not automatically equal legit.
Then I just got it. I think I might have heard it before, although I don't remember, because I'm not a religious person, and it seems to be an illogical answer.
Ah well, there ya go.
So I don't think you have to believe in God or have been brought up as a catholic to get the answer. I think you only need to know what God and the Devil mean to catholics. But I can see how children get it, just like others have mentioned it, they don't get past the God sentence. So I would say the statistic is not valid because they don't solve the riddle, they give an answer to a question (that is only the begining of the riddle)
Think about it like this. In "The Hobbit", Bilbo Baggins asks the riddle "What do I have in my pocket?" to the gollum. The answer could only be one thing for Bilbo. The Ring. If I asked that question, the answer would be something like a tissue, a tube of Carmex, & a nickel. It doesn't quite have the same affect. The original riddle only meant something to the one who thought it up.
Not a single sentence (phrase) is correct:
* Greater in what sense?
* What is God?
* What is devil?
* The poor have something (just not enough).
* The rich need a lot of stuff.
* You may not die if you are on a life support and don't eat (like many vegetative stage people in comas)
People get stupider with age.
The thing about riddles is what they tell you is then assume to be true. Somebody tells you "a rooster lays an egg", making it true in the little universe of riddles. Then for them to say "the rooster DIDN'T lay the egg!" is to completely do a 180.
For example, when somebody asks you "What did the chewing gum say to the shoe?", the hilarious and very clever answer will be "I'm stuck on you." Not, "AHA! Shoes and bubblegum don't converse! Idiot."
Anyways, I got the answer pretty quickly, but I highly highly doubt that 80% of Kindergartners got it.
The part about "eat it and you'll die" tipped me off. I started thinking it was air and went on from there.
As to the religious sections, those really threw me off. I happen to be an Athiest Jew (yah, it sounds contradictory, but I swear it isn't), and I just saw the word "God" and "Devil" and automatically assumed I wouldn't get it, so I just kind of ignored those sections.
As an hilarious example of that way of thinking, to people that knows Terry Pratchett, think in "Pyramids" the encounter with the Sphinx... 😛
"if you take the answer ... logically - its wrong."
AAB had the same "insight"
It's a riddle, git. The riddle of the sphinx is "logically" wrong too, but everyone gets it.
For me the answer was obvious, however I dont think that was the point!!
The "this isn't literally true" complaints don't cut it either. It's a riddle, not a PhD dissertation! Get over it!
"OK, I've got to come out and say that this "I couldn't get it because I'm not religious" excuse is a big cop-out. I don't believe in Odin, but I can answer quite a few questions about him."
I can't speak for anyone else, but I didn't mean to imply that an agnostic or atheist COULDN'T get this riddle, but that it seemed to me to have an attitude of "Well, EVERYONE believes in God, so you should get this with no problem" behind it.
Having had 12 years of Catholic school, I too know a wee bit about the Big G, but I don't automatically "go there" (as the kids say) when confronted with something like this.
Let's see, we have God, the Devil, the poor, the rich, eating, and death.
Which of those references seem dated to you, Christopher?
Maybe I'm way off, but I think that's what Chris is getting at.