Deconstructing a riddle

I annoyed myself this weekend by participating in a Facebook think where you have to do something and try and get other people to do things.

I don't know why there has been so much of an effort to recreate chain letters on social media; maybe it feels like a way of getting people to engage beyond just posting and reading posts. I generally avoid them because I don't like taking dictation, and also there is usually a lot of guilt laid on: most people won't post this; will you?

This is what I responded to...

Soooo... I got the answer wrong. I am now keeping my word and posting this picture 😎 so I'm challenging my friends who are logical and smart thinkers, to have a crack at guessing the answer to the riddle below. When you think you know, private message me the answer via Facebook Messenger.

If you are not going to follow the instructions after you lose, don’t bother playing.

Your turn! Read the riddle. If your answer is incorrect, I can choose any of your photos and you have to post it along with the riddle. If you answer correctly, I'll write your name in the comments (with a trophy emoji).

Riddle: It's 7:00 AM. You are asleep and there is a sudden knock on the door. Behind the door are your parents who came to have breakfast. In your fridge are bread, milk (pasteurized), juice, and a jar of jam. To answer, what will you open first?

* Answer directly through Private message only please. Answers in the comment section will be deleted. **

Note: It’s not what you think. So far no one has got it. Read carefully!!!!

Standby for your photo! 😂😂
I'll choose one, from your fb page.

There is some guilt-mongering there, with the "don't bother" part. There are certainly some challenges to the ego.

This is not a riddle like the ones exchanged by Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit. This is more like a trick questions used for strengthening logic, similar to the ones used on The Brady Bunch when they were helping Cindy prep for the test to be on television (before her ego got the best of her). Remember that one that started "You are the bus driver" and then it is all about quantities of passengers getting on and off? You are trying to track arithmetic in your head, thinking that will be the question, and then they ask "What is the name of the bus driver?" It's not even that you have forgotten that you were the bus driver; you probably didn't take it literally enough for it to enter in. The trick then becomes looking beyond the obvious.

Anyway, I did this. I got the answer wrong, which was okay, except that I thought the answer was really stupid and I didn't want to propagate it. I told three people who DM'd me the answer but did not choose a photo, and I kind of hope the whole thing dies.

I am going to reveal the answer here. I have some guilt about that, but it was stupid and I resented it, so now I am lashing out at the answer. Also to do the full deconstruction - which is kind of my jam - it is necessary.

Trick questions are like magic tricks in that they focus on misdirection; we draw your eyes here while we do the trick part there. A flash of smoke is more likely to be distracting than concealing.

Here the questions is about opening. The logical place for the mind to go is to the most recent items, all of which can be opened: bread, milk, juice, and jam. The extraneous detail about the milk being pasteurized can make you wonder... is that important? Does that mean I should open it first?

That is misdirection, but it is fairly obvious misdirection. A little thinking gets you past that to where you know you have to open the fridge before any of them. A little thinking in a different direction will remind you that it would be rude to leave your parents standing at the door while you make their breakfast.

(Another mode of thinking will tell you that it is rude for your parents to show up expecting breakfast while you are still in bed, but maybe it was prearranged and you accidentally slept in. Even if your parents are rude, you are probably still letting them in first.)

Going back one step further, you are in bed; before you can do anything you need to open your eyes. That works back through three levels of digging past the obvious. Surely it should be the eyes! That subverts the tendency to look the most recent by going back to the very beginning.

(I answered eyes. The people who responded to me responded with fridge, door, and eyes. No one was fooled by the pasteurized milk.)

The answer was Messenger, justified by the phrasing "To answer, what will you open first", followed by the injunction to answer only through Private message.

I was once taught a card game whose clean name is "I Doubt It". It was somewhat like Go Fish, where you are trying to collect and discard cards, but you are supposed to cheat by lying about what cards you have in order to discard faster. Other players can challenge you by saying "I doubt it" or possibly some acronym indicating doubt.

Trying something, I put the card I had and claimed to have on top of another card, holding them together so it looked like only one card. I was challenged when I put the card down, but when I lifted that card only, and left the other on the pile, I got away with actual cheating, not the "cheating" that was within the rules. I still feel guilty about that. (For the record, I think I was eleven, I felt wrong about it, and I have not cheated in a game since then.)

Anyway, I didn't like this riddle because it felt like it was breaking its own rules. The clue is outside of the body of the riddle. If it had been really clever or interesting, that might have made up for it, but as it was I just felt kind of annoyed. I posted my picture, but I am ending it there. I mean, if one of my repliers had come back asking for me to choose a picture - if their honor demanded it - I would have, but no one did.

The bigger violation here is of course that I have revealed the answer, but you have to read a meandering blog post to get there, and maybe that is enough work for what isn't  - in my opinion -  a very good riddle.