to ask for your help solving this impossible riddle/joke

[killingtime9198]

My best friend's family have a family 'joke', which she originally told me about when we were about 12/13. When she originally told me she didn't get the joke either, but then later did manage to work it out. When she first met her now husband he didn't get it, but he later also worked it out. I have never managed to get it, and every now and again I will remember the saga of this joke (this has been going on for about 20 years now), try desperately for a few days to work it out and then forget all about it for months.

Anyway, I wonder if the powers of mumsnet can either locate someone who has heard this 'joke' before, or who can work it out!

The joke is:

'There once was a man called Boswell. For short they called him Bos, and he walked up the post office steps.'

The joke is definitely NOT that there is no joke, and they're all having a laugh at me for trying to work it out - I am 100% confident of this.

How is folding your arms a joke?

You have to copy exactly what they do, but most people don’t realise that Golding your arms at the end is part of it.

Dog- it's not folding the arms that is the joke, you just say, bet you can't get this right. Then do it and fold your arms at the end. They copy it exactly minus the arms and you're all, no that's not it. They're is a similar one where you have to put a lime down correctly. The trick is that you say thank you when the person gives you the lime, it's not anything to do with how you put it down at all.

I don't get it 😢😢😢😭what grip? Pink grip? Purple grip??? Waaaaaaaaa!!!!

On a penis, gaggiagirl. The grip on the penis. Too tight, it goes purple.

gaggiagirl

Imagine a body part, say a finger (ahem) if you held it loosely, it would be pink, tightely it would turn purple.

gaggiagirl I too couldn’t work it out. I thought perhaps tennis racquet handle connected goodngod now poor brainhas this in it also !

@gaggiagir - as an example, imagine holding hands and squeezing (strong grip) really tightly. Eventually you will reduce the blood flow and the squeezed hand goes from pink to purple.

Sorry. I haven’t read it all but enough to get the gist that we still don’t know yet.

Really I’m just placemarking but my tentative offering is is it anything to do with Bos sounding like Bus? And then Bus... walking? Just wondered if there was some sort of Bos/Bus/Buzz play on words. They all sound similar in my accent.

Sorry that’s a crap idea I know ahem

Thank you for the clarification on the folding arms scenario.

I don't see how it would apply here though as the person being told the 'joke' isn't being asked to do anything or even being asked a question.

I think the most likely answer is that the OP has made the whole thing up.

Oh haaaaaaa! That's great! Ha! I'll tell DH that later! 😂

Clearly the answer is some kind of magical incantation that turns you into a smug insufferable cunt.

You know what this thread reminds me of? When Lost was on and people were reading clues into everything but none of it meant anything. This is a Dharma Initiative riddle. And if you don't believe the Lost connection here is some evidence.

In "A Scandal in Bohemia", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes affectionately says of Dr. Watson, who narrates the tales, "I am lost without my Boswell.
and

Ahh I'm up to page 21

Boswelland
Bosand for short
He was 'well' short
Four short

Bleurgh. I hope there's an answer in these remaining pages. How frustrating

HeronLanyon
The information about Nik Kershaw that you shared is a billion times more interesting and welcome than yet another pillock informing everyone that the answer is four letters short, get it! Because they haven't read the fucking thread.

See...

I'm signing out. This thread just got onto the 2nd page of AIBU, please let's let it die there.

Good luck, Thereonce Boswelland Forshort.

I think the joke is you would spend 20 years trying to work it out.
Email Stephen Fry, he will know (unless it's a family thing that only applies to their family)

I think the joke is you would spend 20 years trying to work it out.

This is what I think. There is nothing there, it's to see how long it takes you to stop trying.

Reading all of this with amusement.

My friend and her husband didn't get given the answer on their wedding day - they both worked it out.

For those who still care - I put the 'four/for' suggestion to her and that's not it. She said 'it's not so much about the content of the joke', so it must be something in the way you tell it. That said, I asked her to tell me it over text and she did, so I don't think it can be something you PHYSICALLY do.

Anyway, I am seeing her on Thursday night.

Oh, and it can't be how long it takes you stop trying, because I have both given up and asked for the answer many times over the years, and also not mentioned it for years at a time - if this theory was correct surely I would have 'got it' already.

Why can't she just tell you on text?

This has single handedly been the most frustratingly irritating yet hilarious thread I've read in a long time. I am literally laughing out loud at the posters who are confidently suggesting solutions to the riddle yet their answers make even less sense than the original riddle. Boswelland! 😂 To cut a long story short...Boswell!

Please please please let their be a solution on Thursday!

All that this has made me think of is the sitcom Bread-anyone else remember it?

Just looking on Imdb & the Gilly Coman, the actress who first played Aveline died in 2010

Without me scrolling through the hundreds of posts..can someone give me a quick update?! Are we any closer??

No!