My local favourite coffee shop usually has a riddle posted at the counter, and when I went in this morning, the riddle was this:
What is most useful when it’s broken?
I scratched my head for a while as I thought it through.
Finally, I asked, “Is it a piggy bank?”
It wasn’t. Or at least, he said, not the answer they had. I stepped back and thought it through again. Finally, when my tea was ready and I had no more guesses, I asked for the answer.
“An egg,” he said.
“Aww, that’s not right,” I replied. “Piggy bank’s a better answer than egg.”
This is my reasoning. An egg brings life into the world, which to me seems like the most useful application of anything. If it’s broken, it’s completely useless, except of course – as the riddle implies – if you’re eating it.
Whereas a piggy bank contains money, and when it breaks, you can buy something awesome. Seriously, you can get anything you want. A broken piggy bank could even buy more food than what you’d get from eating a broken egg! Even math agrees with me!
The barrista, however, did not. And since it’s his place, he gets to decide the answers to his riddles.
But since this is my web site…
The correct answer is piggy bank.