Name three common words in the English language that end in 'gry'. Most people can get the first two, "angry" and "hungry." The third is what sends them into posting flurries on the most random of newsgroups.
"So," you're asking, "what the hell is the answer?" Some people point to the word "gry" itself, which means "a period of time" or words to that effect, but that's hardly a common one. The following post from rec.humor.oracle.d (I told you it came up in the oddest places) should make it all clear:
From trans@lucent.com Sun Jun 2 19:30:01 PDT 1996 +-- means@bigdog.engr.arizona.edu (Mike Means) wrote: | And so I kinda read that one about the three "gry" words in the english | language and I completely failed to figure out the answer and realized there | had to have been others who failed as well and maybe, just maybe, there might | still be an old thread about that...There wasn't...So here I am... | Help me please? The riddle, as originally stated, went something like: Think of words that end in "gry". Angry and hungry are two. There are only three words in the English language, and the third is one that we use every day. In fact, if you listen carefully, I've told it to you already. What's the word? ...and the correct answer was "language", that being the third word in "the English language". This distinctly annoying riddle is unsolvable if mangled -- there are only two common English words ending in "gry" -- and has led the readers of rec.puzzles to coin a new word, "nugry", to refer to "person who posts an annoying question in rec.puzzles without first reading the FAQ". It is, as someone else noted upthread, their equivalent to the W**dch*ck Question.
Ok ... that's the sum of it. Feeling better now? Good. Next patient, please.