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?

But there's nothing to suggest that the circle tank is inside the rectangle tank. So the reveal of 'No! For you see, the circle tank was inside the rectangle tank all along!! Haha, fooled you, I'm so clever' is a bit hollow.

A bit like a child forgetting a salient detail but pretending they recounted it correctly and when questioned on the answer responds 'because I said so!'

There are an awful lot of shit riddles in existence.
Riddles composed by idiots who think they are more intelligent than they are, where it becomes more confusing once they reveal the answer. It's usually because they have relied on something they know which they have totally failed to communicate, or even hint at, in the riddle but you are supposed to spontaneously intuit.

Something like how many moons can Bob see at ten pm. None because Bob is blind, lives underground and goes to bed at nine pm. A lot of them make about as much sense as that.

In short, not riddles at all, just stupid questions posed by insufferable twats.

Not only can toddlers not read, they also (mostly*) can't count as high as 64.

*For the benefit of the competitive mumsnetters who will now come out of the woodwork to insist that their 3 month old can do calculus.

For the benefit of the competitive mumsnetters who will now come out of the woodwork to insist that their 3 month old can do calculus

3 months? Pshaw! DS could do calculus and calculated pi to 45 trillion and 6 places. All while rewriting War & Peace in Mandarin. Fourteen seconds after conception.

4 or none.
Is the rectangular tank sat on a table? If so, the tank is resting on the 4 legs of the table.
If the tank is on the floor, it’s not resting on any legs.

In short, not riddles at all, just stupid questions posed by insufferable twats.

The clue to these is that they have things like
'so easy a toddler could answer it'
or when asked for the answer they say
'I can't tell you'
Or
'you are close'

As has been posted its something twats do so that they can laugh at people getting wound up finding an answer that doesn't exist or is so convoluted that there is no point.

I would have thought the answer is zero because any sane person would have killed them all with a flame thrower.

I don't like spiders so my definitive answer is none as I'd have -chucked them out the window- re-homed them hours ago.

Strikethrough fail!

Great minds @NetballHoop

as riddles go, that's up there with one of the worst I've seen. doesnt really make sense, nothing in the original wording to suggest that the round tank is in the rectangular tank. I like a riddle normally, especially wordy ones, but this was really quite shit lol!

*There are an awful lot of shit riddles in existence.
Riddles composed by idiots who think they are more intelligent than they are, where it becomes more confusing once they reveal the answer. It's usually because they have relied on something they know which they have totally failed to communicate, or even hint at, in the riddle but you are supposed to spontaneously intuit.

Something like how many moons can Bob see at ten pm. None because Bob is blind, lives underground and goes to bed at nine pm. A lot of them make about as much sense as that.

In short, not riddles at all, just stupid questions posed by insufferable twats*

This sums up riddles and I am going to keep it to paste into any future riddle threads or whatsapps

@Horizons83 we know we are right.

What we all need is some Anglo-Saxon riddles: here are a few of the printable ones. Others are much more adult... But they are ALL much, much better than the spiders legs one:

www.abdn.ac.uk/sll/disciplines/english/beowulf/riddle.htm

Agree with HerringGull - sounds like a crossword-type of clue to me.

How are you to know the location of the tank? Couldn't the rectangle tank be in a giant round one where the spiders never meet?

Anyway, who let a tarantula drive a tank?

The answer is 64

How the hell did they rationalise that??

@Daisydoesnt

Shouldn’t it be rectangular? Not rectangle?

If we’re going to get mathematical it should be a cuboid, rectangles are two dimensional

I still don't get it!

Is it that tanks have legs? They are often on a stand with 4 legs?

@Puzzledandpissedoff

The answer is 64

How the hell did they rationalise that??

Because, the round tank is inside the rectangular tank. "there are three tarantulas in a round tank and five tarantulas in a rectangle tank. How many legs are in the rectangle tank?"

If it was written the other way round it might make more sense?
In a rectangle tank, there are five tarantulas and there are three tarantulas in a round tank.

Help?

Ahh ok. So the 'riddle' is supposed to parsed like: there are [three tarantulas in a round tank] and [five taranatulas] in a rectangle tank. So all together eight. 8x8=64. Bit of a shit riddle.

@HerringGull

Is it one? There's an L, an E, and a G in the phrase 'rectangle tank'. ??

This was my thought. One in 'the rectangle tank"

Thanks, 00100001 ... I still think it's a bit odd, but at least it makes sense now