Five Famous Riddles You Can't Solve

There are plenty of riddles in literature and pop culture, not to mention in dad jokes and those lists your aunt sends by email. Most have an answer that will make you laugh or groan, but some have no answer at all, or at least no answer that makes sense in the real world. In Lewis Carroll's book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter asks Alice, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Alice tries to answer, but she doesn't know. It turns out that the Mad Hatter doesn't know, either. In the more than 150 years since the book was published, plenty of people have come up with plausible but not-so-funny answers, and even Carroll explained it (nonsensically) at one point. But the fact that there is no answer is there to illustrate that the Hatter is, indeed, mad.

But that's just one example. Read about the raven and the writing desk and four other literary riddles that can't be solved because there is no definitive answer at Cracked.