Actually, this little
rhyme is a
Guinness World Record. It is the
oldest mathematical puzzle being 3650 years old. The riddle was found on the Rhind Papyrus which was dated to be from about 1650
BC. The fact that the scribe Ahmes (no, not the
department store,
Sirius) probably used
hieroglyphics to document his riddle suggests that the words have been altered
slightly in
translation, though the riddle remains the same. And the answer,
one, is
not the generally accepted answer, it
is the answer. The answer is actually on the scroll, but regardless, think about it... the riddle does go, “As
I was going to St. Ives…”. Well, duh, I equates to
one.
This rhyme is also referenced in the third, and best, Die Hard movie, Die Hard With a Vengeance. If Samuel L. Jackson wasn’t so damn clever, NY might have gone boom.