A century-old riddle

July 8, 2014 • 1:57 pm

[JAC: Matthew doesn’t know the answer to this, and neither do I.]

By Matthew Cobb

This appeared on my Tw*tter feed, retw**ted by poet Ian McMillan, the Bard of Barnsley. Can any readers solve it? NB I suspect the answer is not “a nightjar”.

32 thoughts on “A century-old riddle”

  1. It seems to relate to the number of letters in the numbers.

    six = 3 letters
    three = 5 letters
    seven = 5 letters
    five = 4 letters

  2. “six” (3 chars) of us are three
    “three” (5 chars) of us are five
    “seven” (5 chars) of us are five
    “five” (4 chars) of us are four

    not sure about twice three of us are six though 🙂

    1. I think “…twice three of us…” is just a starting point, probably chosen for poetic reasons.

    2. I think “twice three of us” just refers to the actual multiplication: three x two = six <– 3 characters.

      1. Oop, forget that last part; meant to imply that in this case six = 6, and is not a count of characters. But that would also be inconsistent…

  3. It’s the number of letters in the word for the number.
    2 times 3 [letters] is six
    six has 3 letters
    three has 5 letters
    …
    …
    …
    7 has 5 letters
    5 has 4 letters

  4. Whoever wrote that wrote the riddle wrong. The first line should be, “Twice nine of use are eight of us.” As it is written on that paper it doesn’t make sense.

    The real answer is letters. “Twice nine” is eighteen, which has eight letters. “And six of us are three” because “six” has three letters. “Three of us are five of us” because “three” has five letters.

    “Twice three of us” is six, which doesn’t have six letters.

    3. “The real answer is letters. ‘Twice nine’ is eighteen, which has eight letters.”

      Or the way I read it, nine has four letters, and twice that is eight.

  6. The pattern suggests number of letters as mentioned above (earlier comments).

    Though, he might have followed the historical blending of single malts in time to form a set of blended Scotch Whiskeys…who knows.

  8. Obviously it is adescription of three up quarks with spin of 1/2 and three down quarks with a spin of 4/3. Don’t believe me? See if you can charm Deepak from his box for his own quantum spin on the topic.

    1. Why not, discovering a particle with a spin of 4/3 would certainly be worth a nobel prize in magic…

    2. But twice three of the word ‘us’ would be:
      us us us + us us us which is 12.

  13. It doesn’t seem well-posed to me, because we’re supposed to find out what “us” are, yet according to the answers above (which I agree seem likely) “us” is sometimes letters of the alphabet, and sometimes it isn’t: “seven of us are five of us” doesn’t work as “seven of the letters of the alphabet are five of the the letters of the alphabet”. It should be “five of us are seven” (without assuming parallel sentence construction).

    So although I guess “letters of the alphabet” is the intended answer, I prefer “the number zero”: 0+0+0+0+0+0+0 = 0+0+0+0+0. For this to work in all cases I have to assume parallel construction, e.g., “five of us are four” means “five of us are four of us”.

    Would I argue that to my aged aunt? I hope not.

  14. Here’s another one I learned in school:

    A hardware store was having a sale on an item. Joe paid $1.00 and bought 1. Sam paid $2.00 and bought 14. Al paid $3.00 and bought 427.

    What was the item?

  15. A Chicago tune popped right into my head as I read that.

    And now it’s in yours. You’re welcome!

  16. the answer is the numbers of letters in the words, My husband claimed the praise; whith my migraines, I’ awfully useless

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