In 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', what does the Mad Hatter famously ask Alice?

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter famously asks Alice, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

The question appears during the chapter “A Mad Tea-Party,” where the Hatter introduces it as a riddle. Alice tries to solve it, but the Hatter eventually admits that he has no idea why the two things are alike. The joke is that the riddle was deliberately presented without a fixed solution, turning the usual expectations of logic and wordplay upside down.

Readers and puzzle enthusiasts later proposed many answers. One famous suggestion was “Because Poe wrote on both,” referring to Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” and the writing desk. Lewis Carroll included possible explanations in later editions, but none replaced the original comic point: the question is memorable precisely because it is nonsensical.

The Hatter’s question also reflects Carroll’s interest in Victorian riddles, debates and formal logic. It is often misremembered as a question about clocks, but the clock-related conversation comes elsewhere in the tea-party scene, when the Hatter explains why it is always six o’clock.