I NEED MORE ABOUT BOS WELL - solve a riddle part two

[Bamchicabaawaa]

I have just read forty pages of thread and it’s almost full! Let us congregate here for answers!

I dreamt of this bloody thread last night, and I solved it only to wake up and forget what the answer was.
Oh and the original op said that she was meeting family friend tomorrow evening so we might not get to know until Friday!!!!!!!

It’s what for/four. I can’t see how it would be anything else.

""There was a man whose name was Boswell, for short they called him Bosandhewalkedupthepostofficesteps..."

And quick as a flash someone wittily intercepted with "that's not short for Boswell!!""

Certainly makes sense-& is a bit funny!

We're going round in circles now. OP has clearly said it isn't four/for. Also, fyi, it's irrelevant that he's a man and also the post office steps are irrelevant. Boswell is just approaching a building. Derek the dog, who swears s/he's seen the light, says it isn't any form of wordplay. Can we have new suggestions!!

There once was a lady called John. "John", she called, "come solve this MN riddle" and so he did.

I still think its a load of shit. The game is to make the op think it was a riddle for 20 years!

Why are people putting the last part together with no spaces? This baffles me more than the actual riddle itself

"There was a man whose name was Boswell, for short they called him Bosandhewalkedupthepostofficesteps..."

And quick as a flash someone wittily intercepted with "that's not short for Boswell!!"

Hello hello, so I have good news and bad news.

The good news is you don't have to wait until Thursday - I have as much of an update as I'm going to be able to give now.

Basically, after Mumsnet Madness tweeted the thread and one of my friends (who has also been infuriated by this for ages) screen-shotted it to me I realized the Boswell friend may well find out about it, so I text her and confessed about the existence of this thread.

We spoke about it over text - she was v amused and said 'this is better than Uncle X translating it into Latin/Greek and back' - anyway, THEN, as a DIRECT RESULT of this thread.....I GOT IT.

The BAD news is.....I really can't tell you the answer. BUT as I genuinely do feel bad about this I will tell you that none of the theories in the long post towards the top of this thread listing the various theories is correct. However, one or two people in the thread HAVE got it. I'm not sure whether Derek is one of them and I can't message to find out as one of us would clearly have to show our hand to find out if the other one has got it. PLUS I imagine Derek will think this is an elaborate ruse for me to get them to tell me the answer.

I AM TRULY SORRY. But please do remember this has been plaguing me for over 20 years before you throw stones at me.

Forever gratefully yours,

ProbablythemosthateduseronMumsnetrightnow

xx

@Killingtime aaaaaaahhhhhh!

(Ps you're not themosthatedmum, where would Mumsnet be without this thread!!!)

Has someone in THIS thread got it?

From mummy2017 I think she's right, I think it's this...

Now this is weird...
Just told my Oh half this joke...

When he read it out.... I said AND...
He said oh you know him do you?

So maybe his name is AND and the joke only works and is finally finished when someone says it and the other person says AND as an answer

I think the ‘joke’ is that it’s about cutting a long story short, as in ‘for short’ means jumping to the end of the story about Bos where he walked up the steps. If I’m right it’s a crap joke and I’d be royally pissed off if I’d waited 20 years to find out!

If you tell me now, that will be the end of it - I will not look for you, I will not pursue you... but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you... and I will kill you.

What a cop out killingtime.

BAN!!

This just convinces me even more that its a crap fight club thing.

can you tell us why you can't tell us?

Can you say why you can't tell us, killingtime?

Dairyqueen2 - ha, great minds!

If not, I defo don't believe any of it and am a little read off ..

Are Bos and 'he' the same person?

I have worked it out.

A hint for anyone still wondering:

The fact you can't tell anyone is related to the solution

But why can't you explain? Does it identify a family member? Will somebody have to kill you? Will your phone/laptop spontaneously combust? Are you a troll now regretting creating an uncontrollable monster?

I think I can rest easy now - I've read all of both threads so the correct answer is in my head somewhere whereas I pity all those who haven't RTFT...…..

... and if one or two people in the thread HAVE got it (and said it) then it isn't Derek's idea and must be one of the utterly crap explanations instead. I'm out ...