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Word riddles
What starts with an E, ends with an E, but usually contains only one letter?
A letter riddle built on a word with two meanings. The item in question is made of paper and travels through the mail.
What starts with an E, ends with an E, but usually contains only one letter?
Hint: You mail it.
Reveal the answer
An envelope
An envelope begins and ends with E and holds a single letter.
How to solve it (spoilers)
How to think about it
- Words that start and end with E: eye, eve, else, envelope.
- The twist is “contains only one letter”. Most words contain several letters, so “letter” must mean a piece of mail.
- Which of the E-words holds a piece of mail?
- An envelope usually contains one letter.
Why “an envelope” is the answer
Envelope begins and ends with E, and an envelope normally carries a single letter in the postal sense. The riddle switches the meaning of “letter” between spelling and mail halfway through, and the word “usually” is there because some envelopes hold a card or a bill instead. Eye and eve fit the spelling but contain nothing.
Common wrong answers
- Eye. Eye begins and ends with E, but it does not contain a letter of any kind.
- Eve. Eve matches the spelling, but the mail pun is the real test, and an evening holds no letters.
Related riddles
- What starts with P, ends with E and has thousands of letters?
- What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?
- What begins with T, ends with T and has T in it?
- What four-letter word reads the same forward, backward and upside down?
- What word contains all 26 letters?
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