Question 844

"X" is a very famous character, probably originating from a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. "X" is typically portrayed as an egg and has appeared or been referred to in a large number of works of literature and popular culture.The origins of "X" do not explicitly state that the subject is an egg because it probably was originally posed as a riddle.The earliest known version is in a manuscript addition to a copy of Mother Goose's Melody published in 1803.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term "X" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century. The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "X" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person. It is no longer posed as a riddle, since the answer is now so well known. Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages, such as "Boule Boule" in French, or "Lille Trille" in Swedish and Norwegian; though none is as widely known as "X" is in English.

Id X.

Answer: Humpty Dumpty