Newspaper riddle (original) (raw)

The newspaper riddle is a riddle joke or conundrum in English that begins with the question: Q: What is black and white and red all over? The traditional answer, which relies upon the identical pronunciation of the words "red" and "read", is: A: A newspaper. Barrick believes this riddle to be "perhaps the most common example of a folk riddle collected in the United States in the twentieth century", pointing out that between 1917 and 1939 it appeared in 15 collections of folk riddles, and in a further six between 1939 and 1974.