# What word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?

Source: https://silverapuzzles.com/riddles/what-word-becomes-shorter-when-you-add-two-letters-to-it

A spelling riddle where the question describes a word by what happens to its letters, not by its meaning. Think about the word itself rather than about length.

**Answer:** Short.

Add “er” to short and you get shorter.

Hint: Read the question very carefully.

## How to think about it

1. Taken literally, adding letters makes any word longer, so the riddle cannot be about physical length.
2. Switch to the other sense of “shorter”: the comparative form of an adjective.
3. Ask which adjective turns into the word “shorter” when you add two letters. Only one does.
4. Check: s-h-o-r-t plus e-r spells shorter. Five letters become seven, yet the new word means “more short”.

## Why “Short” is the answer

The word “short” becomes “shorter” when you attach the two-letter ending -er. The riddle is a pun on the two readings of “becomes shorter”: the word does not shrink, it simply turns into the word shorter. Any other adjective would gain two letters too, but none of them would spell out the exact word the question names.

## Common wrong answers

- **Long.** Adding “er” gives longer, which does not match the word the riddle asks for.
- **Small.** It feels like a synonym for short, but “smaller” is not the word “shorter”, and the riddle asks for that word precisely.