A baffling riddle about a woman on a boat has been leaving people stumped on social media – but it has a very simple solution that’s easy to find. Can you solve it?
You’ll need to think outside of the box to solve this riddle.
We’ve all heard at least one riddle in our lifetimes. They often require you to think a little differently and consider all the words given to you so that you can reach the solution. Because of this, they’re fantastic brainteaser to get the cogs in your head whirring to life – which is important for all of us.
Puzzles and riddles can help boost your cognitive function and have even been proven to help slow down the onset of memory problems we may face as we get older. What’s more, giving your brain a workout can improve your problem-solving skills and concentration.
But this riddle has been leaving people particularly confused as they struggle to work out what the answer could be. It’s been going viral on social media as people have several different possible answers – but only one of them is actually correct. Can you work out what the solution is?
In a video shared on TikTok by Holden Davenport, he posed the following riddle: “There’s a woman in a boat on a lake wearing a coat. If you want to know her name it’s in the riddle I just wrote.”
The goal of the riddle is to find out the mystery woman’s name, but you get no further information than the two rhyming sentences that are given. It might look impossible at first glance, but it does have a proper solution if you look hard enough.
In Holden’s video, the woman to whom he posed the riddle was left absolutely baffled. She insisted there was no name in the sentences he read out, so she had no idea how she was supposed to solve it. However, he insisted there was a solution – and if you really study the words, he’s right.
The woman guessed words like “boat” and “coat” as the mystery person’s name, but Holden assured her the answer to the riddle was an “actual name”. It requires a bit of alternative thinking, but there is in fact a name in the riddle somewhere
Answer
The correct answer to the riddle is “Theresa”. If you look at the first two words of the riddle and push them together, you get the woman’s name Theresa – albeit pronounced differently to “There’s a”.
Many people in the comments argued that the riddle would have been easier for the woman in the video to solve if she had seen it written down, as having it read out doesn’t work in the same way because of the way the words are pronounced. Others also pointed out there were other names in the riddle too – including “Nina” across the words “woman in a” and even a full name in Ana Lake from the phrase “on a lake”.
But the true answer to the riddle is Theresa. One person said: “Theresa woman in a boat … I mean, I get it, but I also don’t get it. And it only would make sense if you were reading the riddle.” While another added: “Theresa. this type of riddle should be given written though.”
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