So because I'm feeling pedantic, I offer up for discussion a riddle I saw posted on Facebook. As it's supposed to be tricky, I suspect I'll see it making the rounds.
As I recall, the riddle says that there is a fish tank with 10 fish.
Two fish drowned
Four fish swam away
Three fish died
How many fish are left?
[thinking gap, but I propose there is no single right answer so don't think too hard on this]
The "correct" answer is all ten are left. The reasoning is that fish can't drown, there's no place for fish to swim to, and the dead fish are still in the tank.
Okay, so I can accept the dead fish still being there. Saying how many are left implies surviving fish, but that's semantics. Obviously, people need to define what is meant by "left."
I can see the attempted trickery with fish not being able to drown, but fish can totally suffocate due to lack of oxygen in the water. And one definition of drowning is to die of suffocation while under liquid. This definition can get tricky, as it's generally understood that an air-breathing animal drowns by having fluid in its lungs, which causes the suffocation. It depends on how contrary you want to be. Someone could state whether a fish can technically drown, and someone else could come up with a viable argument for the opposite.
But I must say that the away part is unequivocally bullshit. The premise says nothing about the state of the tank. Are there exit tunnels? Is it submerged in a lake? Can fish successfully jump out of the tank? There is no indication that the tank is escape-proof. So you cannot say that there is no place for the fish to swim to if the premise itself specifically says that the fish swam away. You're contradicting the premise, which makes for a lousy riddle. It's the equivalent to asking what has four legs, flies, and barksa dog; I lied about it flying. Okay, that contradiction is done for humorous effect because it's such a short riddle. It does not work here.
There's also the point that the two drowned fish could be grouped in with the three dead fish, so if you were to ask how many surviving fish remained, one could answer one or three.
Fortunately, I did not fall for this riddle, but it's hard to say that anyone truly fell for it since the answer I saw violates the premise as well the definition of drowning. I raised an eyebrow at the drowning part, so I had to look up whether fish can in fact drown. But it was the part of fish leaving but apparently they can't leave that bugged me. Don't put it in the premise if you aren't going to count it.
