The Giraffe Riddle

By: Justin Zablocki (author, Zablocki Bros. LLC) on October 31st, 2013 12:00 AM.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giraffe_9.jpg

Facebook is one of the largest websites and pretty much everyone has an account on Facebook. Originally meant to be a person to person social network, Facebook has expanded its utility and people now use Facebook for pretty much everything. One of the newly popularized things Facebook has been used for is to riddle. This particular riddle has made its way across Facebook in the form of a game:

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?

The answer to this riddle is most popularly the door. But the more interesting aspect of how this game works is that one person posts the riddle and people personal message the answer to that person. If they get it right they get a pat on the back, but if they get it wrong they have to change their profile picture to a picture of a giraffe. This is what gave it the name the "Giraffe Riddle." This riddle was extremely successful on Facebook; successive enough to have articles written about it on several large news sites.

Could Facebook be the next big stage for riddles? It definitely has the volume of people to support this kind of thing. It also allows people to add some reward/punishment based on the answers given. Almost everything has moved on to the internet and improved with this move, and riddles is no exception.