Recycling: Why is a raven like a writing desk?

This is another post from my old old blog that I am recycling by copy and pasting it again up here. This is a riddle (as said by The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland) that used to really do my head in. So one day I did the bright thing and looked it up on the old interweb. This is what I discovered:

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

• Because Poe wrote on both
• Because you cannot ride either one of them like a bicycle
• Because they both come with inky quills
• Because there is a B in both and an N in neither.
• Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes.

And courtesy of Carroll himself:
“Enquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter’s Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, viz: `Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!’ This, however, is merely an afterthought; the Riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all.”

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“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied. “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.
“Nor I,” said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. “I think you might do something better with the time,” she said, “than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers.”