Can someone please help me solve this riddle?

[foreverold]

Was put on parents group chat and driving me mad. Person posting says it's so easy that even 'toddlers could work it out if they read it properly'.

Riddle - there are three tarantulas in a round tank and five tarantulas in a rectangle tank. How many legs are in the rectangle tank?

I did the obvious 5x8 = 40 but obviously that's not it...anyone any idea?

@iklboo yes apparently so 🙄

Opened the thread hoping for the solution to Boswell, which I'd completely forgotten about so now I'm irritated about that again.

Was there any odd punctuation or capitalisation in it OP? There's one about how many S's in a sentence, which only works if the people posting it put the capital S in the right place in the question.

Can someone please fill me in on the Boswell thread?

The answer is forty.

That is extremely lame. You might also want to point out that 0 spiders could be in a rectangle tank, as rectangles are two dimensional.

Needed punctuation for 64 to be anywhere close to being the correct answer. 40 is much more accurate.

How many legs then?
Anyone know?

What’s Boswell?

DS said that's stupid. And that a toddler wouldn't get it. Then he pointed out that (most) toddlers can't read

Boswell was a 'riddle' that the OPs friend's family supposedly knew, and you could only tell someone the answer if they guessed right. It went on for bloody ever, making less and less sense, until OP announced they'd figured it out but that they COULDN'T TELL US because we had to figure it out for ourselves.

I decided to believe it was a troll for my own sanity.

@foreverold

Can someone please fill me in on the Boswell thread?

It’s here

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3441291-to-ask-for-your-help-solving-this-impossible-riddle-joke

Basically OP posts a riddle (‘joke’) and asks posters to explain it to her. Masses of people get involved trying to suss it. And there’s no answer. OP’s friend refuses to tell. And that’s it! Much frustration after all that fucking about. People were pulling it apart in every way possible but no pay off.

So now whenever someone posts a riddle or similar many posters believe it’ll go the same way!

Oh god, I just remembered Boswell. Waah!

If it were somehow a tank with legs, the answer is 0. Support legs are on the outside, not the inside.

If the question is how many legs in the tank and means tarantula legs, as in just legs, the answer is still none because the only legs in there are still attached to the spiders.

I think it's most probably a poorly worded crappy riddle, posted by an insufferable twat on the group chat. I suspect he might have altered the wording because insufferable twats have been known to do that.

Riddles like this one are the reason I don't like riddles.

@Shnuffles

Riddles like this one are the reason I don't like riddles.

I hate them. I hate maths and things that other people can work out and I can't ( as I'm too thick basically)

Did the tarantulas walk up the library steps ?

I hate crappy riddles like that where you can't actually figure the solution out logically, because there's always some stupid made up catch. Oooh, but maybe some of the tarantulas had lost their legs? Aha, all the tarantulas liked the round tank and climbed there so there are none in the rectangular! No, wait, all female tarantulas ate the male ones so it's only 16! Whatever you say, it will be wrong as I can always make something like that up.

Boswell still haunts me. It pisses me off an unreasonable amount that I never did figure it out and even more that no one would tell the answer

It’s 44.

Ahh thanks for explaining. Will have a nosey at the thread. I feel disappointed, I thought it would be an answer I'd be kicking myself over but not that

@MarieFromStTropez out of interest, how did you get 44?

@SirVixofVixHall

Did the tarantulas walk up the library steps ?

Probably 😀

The Boswell one is annoying. I just read it again to annoy myself a bit more.

Thank you, OP, for not tormenting us 👍🏼

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