Newspaper riddle

Examples include: "a chocolate sundae with ketchup on top", "a badger in a blender", "a crossword done in red ink",[3] and "a penguin with a sunburn".

"[5] In The Language of Jokes, Delia Chiaro notes that it is, technically, impossible to translate this joke into languages other than English, pointing out that, for example, in French, Italian, and German the words "rouge", "rosso", and "rot" have no meaning other than "red" and do not possess homophones.

[6] She adds that it is possible to translate the intent of the joke, and to retain the invariant core of the colour red and the reference to a newspaper, by substituting a different riddle that relies upon metaphor, albeit that the homophonic play upon words is lost.

She gives the following example in French, which relies upon the facts that L'Humanité is the newspaper of the French Communist Party, and that, as "red" has in English, "rouge" in French has political connotations of Communism:[6] She also gives a similar example in Italian, this time using the newspaper of the Italian Communist Party (L'Unità), noting that in Italian the order of black and white is the reverse of that in English and "rosso" must come first:[6] For German, she gives this example, which again, like Italian, requires the colour adjectives to be in a different order:[6] In 2009, Jason Jones pitched this riddle to Bill Keller, the editor of The New York Times, giving the answer: "Your balance sheet".

[7] Jimmy Kimmel at the 2012 White House Correspondent's Dinner did this joke and replied: "Nothing anymore", in an allusion to the death of print news.