There are 30 cows in a field. 28 chickens. How many didn't?
Answer: 10 (ten) cows didn't
Breaking Down the Wordplay
"There are 30 cows in a field."
- This part sets up the scenario, establishing a total of 30 cows in a field.
- It's a straightforward statement that doesn't contain any wordplay.
"28 chickens."
- Here's where the wordplay begins. "28" is meant to be heard as "twenty ate" (20 ate).
- The mention of chickens is a red herring, intended to distract from the pun.
"How many didn't?"
- This question relies on interpreting "28" as "twenty ate".
- If twenty cows ate, then the number that didn't eat is 10 (30 total cows minus 20 that ate).
Linguistic Analysis
This riddle cleverly exploits the homophonic nature of "28" and "twenty ate" in English:
- It relies on auditory perception rather than visual reading.
- The riddle works best when spoken aloud or heard, as the written numbers might not immediately trigger the wordplay.
- It demonstrates how homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings or spellings) can create amusing ambiguities in language.
Mathematical Misdirection
The riddle employs several tactics to create confusion:
- It introduces an irrelevant number (28) and an unrelated animal (chickens) to distract from the core wordplay.
- It requires the listener to perform a simple subtraction (30 - 20 = 10) to arrive at the answer.
- The presence of multiple numbers (30, 28) may lead some to attempt more complex calculations unnecessarily.
