"Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"

The stories by English writer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (you probably know him better as Lewis Carroll) usually involved a lot mathematics, logic, and word play.  He is best known for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass.  I remember reading his poem (which actually comes from Through the Looking Glass) "Jabberwocky" during middle school English and Language Arts, thinking that it was a bunch of nonsense (which, I later realized, was exactly his point in writing it).  

There's an interesting passage in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that involves a conversation between Alice and the Mad Hatter (check at the scene from the 1951 full length animated Disney movie here - on a side note, I always thought the Tea Cups ride at Disneyland was perfect fit for the Mad Hatter's Tea Party scene in the book and movie):

Mad Hatter: Why is a raven like a writing-desk?  Have you guessed the riddle yet?

Alice: No, I give it up.  What's the answer?

Mad Hatter: I haven't the slightest idea.

As it turns out, there is no answer to this riddle!  Subsequent writers have attempted to answer this question over the years.  For example, I've heard someone muse that perhaps Edgar Allen Poe used a writing-desk for his famous poem, "The Raven", which is certainly possible considering that Poe first published it in 1845 and Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.  I've also heard someone suggest that both writing-desks and ravens have quills!  Yet another individual suggested that both have "outstanding bills" on them!  

Apparently Carroll himself suggested that a raven is like a writing-desk "because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat" in an updated version of the book.  He continued, "and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front" (note that he misspelled the word never on purpose - nevar is raven spelled backward - but apparently a copy editor corrected the misspelling thinking that it was an inadvertent mistake).

Lewis Carroll loved writing riddles with no answers, and he loved nonsensical writing even more!  His pen name is actually a riddle in and of itself.  He apparently translated his real name, or at least the first and middle names, into Latin form "Carolus Lodovicus", reversed them, and then translated them back into the English Lewis Carroll!

Some have suggested that Lewis Carroll's point was to talk about time.  Note that the entire conversation between the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and Alice takes place during a never-ending tea (see the entire conversation around the fact that the Mad Hatter's world is stuck at 6 PM) party (note also that the letter "t" is the mathematical symbol for "time").  Alice responded to the Mad Hatter's reply and said, "I think you might do something better withyg the time, than waste it asking riddles that have no answers."  To which the Mad Hatter replied, "If you knew Time as well as I do, you wouldn't talk about wasting it.  It's him."  

Some have suggested that this entire sequence is a reflection on the some of the newer mathematical concepts of that period in history and in particular the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton's theory of pure time.  The fact that the Mad Hatter's riddle is not solveable reflects the difficulty in understanding some of Hamilton's theories about space-time.  

I could end this post with a conversation and reference about the High Reliability Organization principle of "Reluctance to Simplify", but I won't.  I think the point of all of this discussion (both mine and Carroll's) is to remind all of us to always look for the hidden, deeper meaning.  In other words, take the next step and avoid oversimplifying things too much, because you could end up missing something important.