2008-10-07

A winged sphinx with a smiling human head and a tiger's striped lower body sits before a bald, bearded traveler. The sphinx says, "Before you pass, you must answer the riddle of the Sphinx! What walks on four feet at morning, two feet at noon, and three feet at night?" The traveler answers, "A man." The sphinx replies, "Wrong! It's this really weird goat I found!" and gestures to a goat beside it that bleats, "Mah-ah-ah-ah!" A caption notes the Sphinx also accepts "some other weird goat" and "a guy who changes leg number a lot." The joke: the classic answer to the riddle of the Sphinx is "a man," but here the sphinx has a different, absurd correct answer. Votey: a close-up of the traveler's pained face, with a second face morphing out of it, captioned "Dammit! It's always your second guess."