People have been left scratching their heads over a baffling riddle that seems ‘impossible’ to solve – but those who enjoy a specific hobby could solve it easily
Keeping your mind fit and healthy is just as important as exercising the rest of your body. One of the best ways to ensure your brain gets a good workout is by challenging yourself with tricky brainteasers that make you think in different ways.
Solving a fiendishly difficult puzzle not only gives you a dopamine rush that makes you feel good, but brainteasers can also improve your problem-solving skills, boost your cognitive abilities, and even help to stave off the effects of degenerative diseases such as dementia. So if you need something to train your brain today, why not give this puzzle a go?
Be warned, though. You might have a hard time solving this riddle unless you’re particularly well-versed in a certain hobby.
The puzzle was shared on TikTok by the account for the Lateral with Tom Scott podcast. In the clip, Ali Spagnola asks the tricky question while podcast host Tom Scott and his guests Katelyn and Evan Heling try to solve it.
Ali asked them: “Sarah is spending a relaxing evening at home. After a while, she sighs, and decides she needs to tink. After tinking for a while, she sighs again and decides she needs to frog. What is causing her to tink and frog?”
These words might sound confusing to most people, and the bizarre riddle certainly left Tom, Katelyn, and Evan baffled as it took them a long time to reach the solution.
Katelyn quickly deduced that whatever “tinking” is, it must be repeatable or take a long time to do, as the wording of the riddle states that Sarah does this “for a while”.
She also correctly worked out because Sarah “sighs” before each activity, it must be something she doesn’t necessarily want to do.
The group initially believed the words could be acronyms for something, but that is not the correct line of thinking. They also believed it could be code, where one word means something else, but that’s not entirely true either – although it isn’t far off.
Ali eventually gave them some hints to help, as she pointed out that Sarah is “trying to undo some mistakes” with her actions, which is the reason for her sighing. She also revealed the word “tink” specifically “has a clue in it”.
Have you worked it out yet? We’re about to give you the answer, so don’t scroll any further if you’re still working on it.
Answer
The solution is that Sarah was knitting.
Anyone who knits regularly may have heard the word “tink”, as it is literally “knit” backwards, and it means to undo some knitting if you’ve made a mistake in your pattern. Frog is also a term used in knitting, meaning to unravel several rows of stitches.
Ali explained to the group: “Tink is to go backwards to the place where you made the mistake, so knit backwards. Frog is to unravel several rows of stitches. If you realise that the mistake happened much earlier, the name is a pun on ‘rip it, rip it, rip it’. Unravel it, rip it back, mimicking the ribbit noise that a frog makes.”
Did you manage to solve it? Let us know in the comments!
