@heatherhorns I think so. Like the first such one of these I'd heard was about "a man comes into a restaurant, orders albatross, takes a bite, mulls it over and then goes out and shoots himself? why?"

@chimerror @heatherhorns I'm not normally good at riddles, and this one appears to be one that I could ponder for several lifetimes and not find a satisfactory answer.

@matoakit @heatherhorns the actual answer isn't that satisfactory!

like I said it's basically like a shaggy dog whodunnit where the real enjoyment comes in putting together a set of questions that lead you to the answer.

I think it works ok as like killing time in an analog, but I've always felt that it's a crapshoot if your audience would begin unravelling the threads

my recommendation is to focus on the man. who is he? what's his deal? anything interesting happen?

@chimerror Coming into a restaurant could be inheriting a restaurant, things like that.

Finding the little threads and language oddities is part of the fun of riddles.

@matoakit well and that's what makes this one a bit dissatisfying, it's really not about the language in this case.

He didn't infiltrate the restaurant, he came in openly and was accepted as such. Nothing was too odd about his order other than albatrosses not being common eating food, but I guess you can assume this is the type of weird meat place that would have something like that.

(feel free to ask more, this would actually work great over social media!)

@chimerror Yeah, my line of thought was he inherited a restaurant, then ordered what he needed to keep it running, the "albatross" around his neck was the debt gained.

Something about taking a bite would be giving it a try or taking on even more debt, then thinking his life over, he went out and shot himself.

So the "why" would be he lost everything trying to maintain a restaurant and failed and gave up resulting in no reasonable way out of debt other than suicide.

@matoakit *Johnathan Frakes voice* not this time.

in this case, I mean what I said. He didn't own the restaurant; he's just a client. He ordered albatross meat and was indeed given albatross meat (poor albatross). He had no previous relationship with the restaurant beyond just walking by and noticing it.

@chimerror Yup, it seems a more literal interpretation.

I'm at a loss so far, but I'll ponder it!