Paul Harvey Riddle
Gary C. sent me this riddle which has been doing the rounds on email for quite a while, though I had never seen it before. As Gary pointed out, the interesting thing about this is not whether it really is a Paul Harvey riddle (I have no clue), or even the riddle itself. It's the claim that 80% of kindergarten kids got the answer while 83% of Stanford graduates were unable to. Instead of trying to track down whether or not a group of Stanford graduates ever has been tested with this riddle, I thought I'd do the next best thing. Take an unscientific poll of Museum of Hoaxes readers to see how many of you are able to figure out the answer right away vs. aren't able to. That'll give a rough approximation of the percentage of (presumably over-kindergarten age) people able to solve the riddle, assuming people answer the poll honestly.I have to admit that I couldn't get the answer. I finally gave up and googled for the answer.
If you've seen the riddle before and already know the answer, then base your response to the poll on the first time you ever saw the riddle. Did you figure out the answer immediately? If you were in kindergarten when you first were given the riddle, then don't respond to the poll.
I put the answer in a link below for those people, like myself, unable to figure it out.
Paul Harvey RIDDLE:
When asked this riddle, 80% of kindergarten kids got the answer, compared to 17% of Stanford University seniors.
What is greater than God, More evil than the devil, The poor have it, The rich need it, And if you eat it, you'll die?
Send this to 10 people and then press shift and you will get the answer.
P.S. You won't believe this, but this really does give you the answer!!!!
The Answer
Listed in chronological order. Newest comments at the end.
Page 2 of 11 pages < 1 2 3 4 > Last »
god is just odg spelt sideways
Posted by Sharruma on Sat Feb 12, 2005 at 09:25 PM
Ha! I got it and was feeling quite smug, until I read the above comments. Now I'm thinking, rather than comparing Kids and Uni Seniors, maybe a more revealing study would compare religious people and non believers. It seems that the riddle does have a Religious/Christian bias.
Posted by Pix on Sat Feb 12, 2005 at 10:40 PM
Besides the necessity of believing in God in the first place to come up with the "correct" answer, the riddle has another problem. The poor don't have "nothing." They have less money than the rich by definition, but that doesn't mean that they have NONE or "nothing."
The "riddle" is stupid, therefore it probably did originate with Paul Harvey. Time to buy an eight-pound Oreck vacuum and a Bose Wave radio. Page two!
Posted by Cranky Media Guy on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 03:04 AM
The "riddle" is stupid, therefore it probably did originate with Paul Harvey. Time to buy an eight-pound Oreck vacuum and a Bose Wave radio. Page two!
i tried for about 10 seconds then gave up. so you can't really count mine as I didnt really try, but I thought I'd post anyway!
Posted by thunder in England on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 03:50 AM
The reason that kids can get the answer and not many "educated adults" is that kids stop listening after the first part of the question, "what is greater than God?" (Like Rita's Mom)
If the riddle was reworded to start with the rich and poor business, I bet the kids wouldn't know either.
Posted by Bill in Pennsylvania on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 04:05 AM
If the riddle was reworded to start with the rich and poor business, I bet the kids wouldn't know either.
The whole point of the riddle is to show the relevance of God to an 'innocent' child, who has not yet been through the world & an 'educated' student ready for graduation. ...as in, no matter how educated you are, if you have faith like a child you'll understand everything.
...I first saw this about 6 years ago...I didn't know anything about God, and I still figured it out after reading it through just once.
It's a riddle. Stop picking it apart and just admit you don't get it.
You can't rephrase a riddle...the whole point of a riddle is in it's phrase.
Posted by Maegan in Tampa, FL - USA on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 04:06 AM
...I first saw this about 6 years ago...I didn't know anything about God, and I still figured it out after reading it through just once.
It's a riddle. Stop picking it apart and just admit you don't get it.
You can't rephrase a riddle...the whole point of a riddle is in it's phrase.
On a more sadistic note, I got sidetracked with the whole "eat it, and it'll kill ya" part. I started to go through my list of known poisons and toxins! Then of course there's the point that if you eat too much of anything (even something as innocent as water) it'll kill you.
Posted by Laura on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 05:40 AM
Maegan, "picking things apart" is how people learn things, whether it be theology or science or biology.
Posted by cvirtue in deleted on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 07:26 AM
The phrase 'greater than' immediately made me think it was a mathematical puzzle in disguise, so I began to try to apply numeric values to the words and see if it was some kind of alphabetic progression. Talk about overanalyzing the stupid thing.
Posted by Alex in San Diego on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 08:24 AM
I had never heard this before and I didn't get it although I didn't try hard because I suspected it had a centrist religious theme. I also suspect the stats are phony designed to make a boring riddle more interesting.
I used to listen to Paul Harvey with great interest years ago. Then one day he told a story about something that happened in my area. He got all the facts screwed up and from then on he lost credibility with me.
Posted by Captain Al in Alberta, Canada on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 09:32 AM
I used to listen to Paul Harvey with great interest years ago. Then one day he told a story about something that happened in my area. He got all the facts screwed up and from then on he lost credibility with me.
Paul Harvey lost credibility with me when during the first Gulf War he advocated dropping a neutron bomb on Iraq as a humane thing to do since it would kill everyone quickly (then segued into a pitch for whatever crap he was shilling for at the time).
Before then I just thought of him as some guy on the radio station my mother listened to who told harmless little stories. Now I can't think of him as anything other than a monster.
Posted by kf on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 10:42 AM
Before then I just thought of him as some guy on the radio station my mother listened to who told harmless little stories. Now I can't think of him as anything other than a monster.
I'm a college grad, not from Stanford though. Totally whiffed on the answer! I was thinking money as well, but after seeing the answer I had one of them forehead smacking reactions of Duh!
Posted by Captain Platypus in Ohio on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 10:57 AM
I despise Paul Harvey. Good day.
Posted by Hairy Houdini on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 12:04 PM
I saw this for the first time in a slide-show presentation that was on one of those free greeting card sites, about six months ago. You could address & send the riddle to anyone's email you knew. But it was prefaced by more of the riddle, or maybe the original was added to. It started with 'What is it?..... This word has seven letters..... Preceded God.....'-then the rest was as stated. When the riddle was done, they only gave you about 15 seconds to answer it. No, I didn't get it the first time, even with a couple more clues than stated above. Guess I'll see you in the afterlife, Paul in Holland.
Posted by stork in the spiracles of space on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 12:24 PM
I don't agree that you would need to believe in God (or the Devil) to figure out this riddle; you would only need to have heard of God and the Devil.
Anyhow, it looks like only about one out of three readers guessed the riddle, so, Alex, I apologize for my earlier comment that 95% of dogs would be able to figure it out.
That still leaves us with the question of whether there really is a higher percentage of kindergarteners than Stanford students who can get the right answer. Until somebody tells me who tested this and when, and lets me see their data, I think I'll assume that that claim was just made up out of thin air.
Posted by Big Gary in Dallas, Texas on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 01:31 PM
Anyhow, it looks like only about one out of three readers guessed the riddle, so, Alex, I apologize for my earlier comment that 95% of dogs would be able to figure it out.
That still leaves us with the question of whether there really is a higher percentage of kindergarteners than Stanford students who can get the right answer. Until somebody tells me who tested this and when, and lets me see their data, I think I'll assume that that claim was just made up out of thin air.
I had it but wasn't sure! 
Posted by Carl_P in NY on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 02:30 PM
I don't think you need to believe in God to figure out this puzzle, you only have to understand the popular concept of God. I'm an athiest and I think it's a cop out (of course, I didn't figure it out, but I blame that on my being an intellectual light weight)
If the question was "What's North of Santa's workshop", I don't think people who didn't get it would be apt to say "Oh, well I don't believe in Santa, so naturally I wouldn't have figured it out".
Posted by JoeSixpack on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 03:53 PM
If the question was "What's North of Santa's workshop", I don't think people who didn't get it would be apt to say "Oh, well I don't believe in Santa, so naturally I wouldn't have figured it out".
Joe Sixpack said:
"I don't think you need to believe in God to figure out this puzzle, you only have to understand the popular concept of God. I'm an athiest and I think it's a cop out (of course, I didn't figure it out, but I blame that on my being an intellectual light weight)"
OK, point well-taken, but I DO think that the thrust of the "riddle" implies a belief in God--kind of like "Well, EVERYONE believes in God and everyone knows that NOTHING is greater than God so you should be able to figure this out immediately."
As for Paul Harvey, he's been caught numerous times airing stories that had NO basis in fact. Check out snopes.com; I believe there's a few examples of him doing that there. He's hardly a credible source of information.
Posted by crankymediaguy on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 04:38 PM
"I don't think you need to believe in God to figure out this puzzle, you only have to understand the popular concept of God. I'm an athiest and I think it's a cop out (of course, I didn't figure it out, but I blame that on my being an intellectual light weight)"
OK, point well-taken, but I DO think that the thrust of the "riddle" implies a belief in God--kind of like "Well, EVERYONE believes in God and everyone knows that NOTHING is greater than God so you should be able to figure this out immediately."
As for Paul Harvey, he's been caught numerous times airing stories that had NO basis in fact. Check out snopes.com; I believe there's a few examples of him doing that there. He's hardly a credible source of information.
Since there is no such thing as 'God', everything is greater than or equal to 'God'.
Posted by Captain Al in Alberta, Canada on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 05:13 PM
87.52% of all statistics are made up on the spot!
Posted by Sharruma on Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 05:16 PM
Page 2 of 11 pages < 1 2 3 4 > Last »