There's nothing quite like a good, challenging riddle, and this is one that's currently melting the minds of the Internet. It seems simple, but the earlier claim that 97% of people get it wrong was not supported by survey data.
Can you identify the relationship and the assumption behind it?
Give it a try!
Do you like riddles? (And, no, this is not the big riddle.)
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The chances are that you do, but they are always a lot more fun when you can't figure out the answer.
Whether you are a fan of them or not, you have seen them come packaged like this.
They are almost like little poems that depend on wordplay and outside-the-box way of thinking to get the best and most intelligent to turn out with their answers.
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These are all pretty familiar, right? They may not be easy to solve, but you'll probably feel like you have heard things like this before.
They may make your ears perk up.
I hate when people talk in riddles
— Bretny G (@itzbretnyBitchh) 19 Σεπτεμβρίου 2017
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Or they may lead to reactions like that from the less-fantastic people among us.
So, if you are ready to get going, perhaps you want to jump right into the viral riddle that has been tearing the Internet in two.
Put your mind to the test with the (just seemingly) easy question that most people fail to answer.
It's just a simple question:
The riddle: Teresa’s daughter is the mother of my daughter. So what am I to Teresa?
Did you think that was anticlimactic?
Before you rush to judgment, just think about it. What’s your answer? We will even provide some for you, free of charge.
So, here are your choices:
- Her grandmother
- Her mother
- Her daughter
- Her granddaughter
- I am Teresa
- Not sure
Well, we have an assortment of female relatives to pick, correct?
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How challenging could this be? If you are still struggling with it, may I suggest that you ask for more assistance?
Look! We even give you a hint!
Hint: think about who is asking the question.
You must be getting close now. If not, we have got you covered!
People are still completely baffled.
If Teresa daughter is my daughter mother, then what is Teresa to me?
— Nick Soldan (@NickSoldan) 3 Μαΐου 2017
It's a riddle I can't figure out need help!!!!!
Wonder no more, because we have the answer for you!
Last chance to solve it yourself!
It is deceptively tricky, isn’t it? The deception is hidden in the perspective more so than the nature of the relationships.
So, time’s up!
Show the answer
You are Teresa’s daughter. In the usual reading, the mother of “my daughter” is the speaker. Put “me” into the sentence and it becomes: Teresa’s daughter is me. Asked the other way round (“what is Teresa to me?”), the answer is that Teresa is your mother. This relies on the speaker being the child’s mother; the bare wording also allows other family arrangements, as explained below.
Mindblowing! If you were going crazy trying to figure it out you can now put your mind at ease.
How did you do?
Reference: TwentyTwoWords
Translate one relationship at a time
The riddle quoted in this article asks: if Teresa’s daughter is my daughter’s mother, what is Teresa to me? Start by naming the people instead of trying every family label at once. Let the speaker be S and the speaker’s daughter be D. The statement tells us that D’s mother is Teresa’s daughter.
Under the usual intended interpretation, S is D’s mother. Substituting that into the sentence gives: Teresa’s daughter is S. The speaker is therefore Teresa’s daughter, and Teresa is the speaker’s mother.
Why a different answer can also fit the bare wording
The sentence alone does not say that the speaker is the daughter’s mother. If S is the child’s other parent, Teresa’s daughter is that person’s co-parent. Calling Teresa a mother-in-law would additionally assume a marriage. The wording, by itself, does not supply that extra relationship.
The familiar answer therefore works under an intended assumption, rather than proving that every other interpretation is illogical. This is a useful distinction between solving the puzzle as its author probably intended and testing whether the statement has only one possible meaning.
A quick way to check your solution
Replace each phrase with your proposed person and read the whole sentence again. If the relationships still match, identify any assumption you added. This substitution method works better than treating the puzzle as a race to choose the most surprising label.
The unsupported claim that 97% of people fail is not a measurement of intelligence. Enjoy the wordplay, and give yourself credit for noticing ambiguity: sometimes the most interesting part of a riddle is the information it leaves out.
For another puzzle built around a shift in perspective, explore Photo Illusions: How Perspective Turns Ordinary Scenes Into Puzzles.
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