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Well for starters Lewis Carroll went on
record as saying: "The riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all". So
the real answer to it is that there is no answer at all and that is the joke - Which I think is as good a
reason as any, as it fits in perfectly with the Mad Hatter's insane character.
However despite this it hasn't stopped people including Lewis Carroll himself
hazarding feasible answers to it. Below are possibilities, each with an
explanation: Lewis Carroll
himself got bugged about the riddle so much that he was moved to write the
following in the preface to the 1896 edition of his book:
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.
NB. Nevar is raven spelled backward -
i.e the "wrong end in front"
Other popular answers put forward by
others are:
"Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical
notes." - You write notes on desk, and noises ravens make are famed for not being very musical.
"Because Poe wrote on both." - Edgar
Allen Poe wrote a poem titled "The Raven", so he was writing something on a
raven. You also write on desks.
"One might communicate with the dead
through either." Automatic writing is used to communicate with the dead, and
ravens are symbolically associated as messengers between the living and the
dead.
"Because they both come with inky quills." -
(Remember that feather pens were a common writing tool of the day, and that
writing desks had inkwells)
"One is a rest for pens, and the
other is a pest for wrens."
"Because it slopes with a flap." -
(The raven's flap of course being of it's wings)
"Because there is a B in both and an
N in neither."
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