#aFactADay2025
R for Raven
#1582: why is a raven like a writing desk? that's what the Mad Hatter riddles. so many people wondered what the answer was, but there simply was none. so Lewis Carroll dreamed up quite a good answer and put it alongside an exasperated note in a later edition of the book: "it can never put the wrong end in front!" but that didn't help the situation because... i still don't get it. what had happened was he'd written "nevar", which is "raven" backwards (wrong end in front) but the publishers had corrected it as if it'd been a typo! nobody discovered the error until years later, leaving other people to create their own answers, better in any case:
Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes. (Sam Loyd, 1914)
Because there is a B in both and an N in neither. (Aldous Huxley, 1928)
Because it slopes with a flap. (Cyril Pearson, undated)
Alice in Wonderland was written with a target audience of three people, the Liddells, and there whole book is filled with easter eggs and in-jokes that only these three children in specific were expected to understand. perhaps this one is similar.
