What does an envelope say when you lick it?
a. “Where’s the chicken?”
b. “Yum!”
c. Nothing. It just shuts up
d. “My wrist watch broke”
What’s so funny about this? I decided to make riddles multiple choice questions because most non-native speakers will be stumped by a direct riddle. Riddles use puns, idioms and lots of cultural referents all of which are the last things you learn in a language. They are really very advanced, linguistically. So I think it makes more sense to give a learner a choice of four possible answers. True, they have a 25% chance of simply guessing it, but if they play fair and use whatever knowledge of English they have, they should or could be able to deduce the answer. The riddle has an extra pun in the question, “What does an envelope say when you lick it?” I’m assuming that a learner will know the meaning of all the words in the question, but they may not know that “lick” can also mean “defeat” in slang. Another feature of riddles is that they can be surreal, or unrealistic. In this case we are asked about a talking envelope, not something you see in real life, but maybe in a cartoon. If the learner can accept a talking envelope then the question is, what will the envelope say? There are four possible answers, but only one really makes sense. The first answer is another question about chicken. Chicken can be “finger-lickin’ good” so there is that association, but it doesn’t make much sense. The second possibility is “yum”, an expression meaning that something is tasty, but the envelope is not doing the licking, it’s being licked, so that answer is out. The third choice is not only realistic, but there is the pun about shutting up which means both not speaking as well as closing. Envelopes have glue on the flap, so that when the glue is licked the flap will stick to the rest of the envelope, sealing it shut. So THAT’s the answer. The final choice is an allusion to an old commercial for Timex watches that said they “take a licking and keep on ticking. This has nothing to do with the riddle. Maybe it’s time for me to just shut up. And THAT’s what’s so funny!
This photo came from Flickr.com
