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Are you smart or a giraffe?

October 31, 2013 06:20 pm | Updated May 28, 2016 01:09 am IST - chennai

A small riddle has gone viral on Facebook, for a change not backed by any commercial interest. Unless there is some sort of a Giraffe brand that we don’t know about that will soon be launched…

01mp giraffe

So if you are still wondering why many of your friends have changed their display pictures to giraffe, that’s because they are playing along and carrying a riddle forward. A riddle that looks simplistic but is deceptive and has no real answers, allowing the person posting the riddle to change the answer and bully the person taking up the ‘Giraffe Challenge’ to change their display picture to that of a giraffe.

The sneakily worded riddle goes like this: It’s 3 a.m., the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors! It’s your parents and they are here for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese. What is the first thing you open?

Why has this childish-sounding riddle become so popular and gone viral? Because the first thing it opens is bottled up nostalgia. It gives grown ups the chance to be kids again and indulge in a little game that lets them interact with ‘Friends’ on their list. It also is the perfect excuse to get back in touch with friends you haven’t been in touch with or an icebreaker to start a conversation with your newly added friends. But mostly because it is great bait material. The answer seems so easy and you want to know if you are right.

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Now answer the riddle. And then come back to read the rest of this post. No cheating.

SPOILER begins: There is a huge group of people who believes that the answer has to be “Door” because well, according to the riddle, you wake up first.

But going by the logic that the question already states you wake up (which means you have opened your eyes), it also tells you that it is your parents (which means you have already opened the door as well)... And they have already told you they are there for breakfast (which rules out wine)... So no matter what you have to get next (bread, honey, strawberry jam or cheese), you have to open the fridge! But whether or not you have a fridge is not mentioned in the riddle. Nor does the riddle state if they are diabetic or lactose-intolerant, which could rule out honey, strawberry jam and cheese... And because of insufficient knowledge of their medical condition, you can’t just give them bread because what will they eat it with?

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Given that the time your parents are arriving for breakfast is three a.m., chances are you are having a bad dream. Speculation aside, this is a purely hypothetical situation about a series of events.

Hence, since we are going strictly by the information given in the riddle, unless you have a big mouth you open to yawn, the answer to what you will open first in the series is “your eyes”. Elementary, dear Watson!

Hope you have changed your display picture to a giraffe.

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