My friends and I did Alice in wonderland for our school play and wanted to figure out the answer. After about a month of thinking we figured it out. A raven is like a writing desk because Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Raven on a witingdesk.
All the best,
madwriter (Natassia Gaines)
Lost Creek, WV
Actually, that’s an old suggested answer, and its proper form is: “Because Poe wrote on both.”
Another suggested answer is: “Because there’s a b in both.”
There are a few more old, regular, well-known suggested answers, but it’s late and I can’t remember them. (Yawn.)
In one of Jasper Fford’s books, the heroine, Tuesday Next, kept having to answer that question and kept giving different answers. She probably hit all the regulars. I also can’t remember which one of his books it was, so you’ll just have to read them all. There are worse fates.
My favourite answer has already been mentioned by Yllaria:
Because there’s a b in both.
Those who are quick to rise to an argument are eager to point out that there is no ‘b’ in ‘raven’, nor is there a ‘b’ in ‘writing desk’. However, there is most certainly a ‘b’ in ‘both’.
As noted in Martin Gardner’s Annotated Alice, Lewis Carroll, tied of being constantly asked, gave the following answer in a preface to an 1896 edition:
“Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat, and it is nevar put wrong end in front.”
Apparently an editor in a late edition “corrected” the spelling in the preface and so a part of that joke was lost.