Which room do ghosts avoid?

How to think about it

1. List the rooms in a house: kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, dining room, living room, and look at each name as a pair of words.
2. Ask what a ghost is not. A ghost is not living.
3. One room has that word in its name.
4. Ghosts avoid the living room.

Why “the living room” is the answer

The living room is named for living, and a ghost by definition is not alive, so it is the one room a ghost would stay out of. The pun works because “living” in “living room” long ago stopped meaning anything about life to most people. The riddle makes you hear it again, and that small jolt of noticing is the whole joke.

Common wrong answers

• The bathroom. There is no pun connecting ghosts and bathrooms.
• The attic. Attics are where ghosts are supposed to live in stories, so they would not avoid one.