The three words...-gry riddle is circulating again, but phrased in such away as to not make sense. Does anyone still have the original riddle? +++++++++++ 08-16-04, 04:09 PM Ewood27 "There are three words ending in -gry. Hungry and angry are two. What is the third word in the English language?"
The answer, of course, is l-n-u-g-.
08-16-04, 04:17 PM juanruiz Thanks, but that's not it. The premise statement is much longer.
08-16-04, 04:46 PM Georgia85 Think of words ending in -GRY. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is.
This version supports the theory that the first two sentences are red herrings; the catch is that the teller is literally asking you to identify the third word of the phrase "the English language" -- there are only three words in the phrase "the English language," the third word ("language") describes something that one uses every day, and "language" is indeed a word which the teller has "already told you." This explanation also supports the contention that this riddle was meant to be presented orally, because a properly punctuated written version would make the gimmick too obvious:
Think of words ending in -GRY. "Angry" and "hungry" are two of them. There are only three words in "the English language." What is the third word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I have already told you what it is. Another hypothesis is that the current form of the riddle is a corruption of a yet another version, one which must also be delivered orally for its gimmick to make sense:
There are at least three words in the English language that end in g or y. One of them is "hungry" and another is "angry." There is a third word, a short one, which you probably say every day. If you listened carefully to everything I say, you just heard me say it. What is it? The catch here is that by offering the examples of "hungry" and "angry," the teller misleads the listener into thinking he's asking for a word ending in "GRY" when he's really asking for a word ending in "G or Y." The correct answer in this case is "say," a short word ending in "y" which the teller had pronounced three times in the course of presenting the riddle.
