I like our answers better.
Rube’s bad puzzle! (5)
Man, that is some fine 1803 vintage humor we got here.
:rolleyes:
I suspect Will Shortz will share the answer - someone else will have done similar detective work (well done troub!) and let him know - and then hopefully walk right past it to better answers!
Nice. This is how bad I am at cryptics: I knew the answer when I read it last night, but it was only this morning that I figured out how the first part of the puzzle fits in – and it’s a particularly easy cryptic-style clue. If anyone is having a brain fart like me:
Rebus - “Rube’s” is an anagram, of course, and “bad” is one of those indicator words used in cryptics that clue you in that an anagram might be being fished for. This might be the easiest style of cryptic clue, yet I completely missed it last night. No wonder cryptics frustrate me so.
Ha, didn’t even think of that…just did it, thanks, though someone probably has beaten me to it by now.
Incidentally, when Shortz made his follow-up broadcast, he (a) stuck to saying that, so far as he knows, the riddle was never officially solved back when; and (b) mentioned getting a number of good answers – including, of course, ‘teachers’ and ‘clownfish’ – but Shortz figured the intended answer was ‘ruler’.
The idea that the man and the woman and the kid who goes to school were all named ‘I’ was not mentioned – either because nobody with troub’s impressive research skills got around to submitting it, or because it’s just really stupid.
Hey - thanks for that update! I wasn’t able to listen on Sunday. That all sounds good - we Dopers had it covered. 
Did anyone bother trying to answer this one? I thought it was easy.
Tar, rat, art.
Likewise, I got the first and third one of these, but am stumped by the second:
The first is a shadow, the third is crying.
What is “always in motion” but when its asleep “can pleasantly laugh, and as mournfully weep”? A dog dreaming? :dubious: 
I think the meaning of the published answer is not that “I” is the proper given name of the man, woman and child, but it’s the name they (and we) all use for ourselves. So in the sentence “I took a walk,” perhaps I am a man, I am a woman, or I am a schoolboy. The sentence is ambiguous because all three of those people use the name “I” to refer to themselves.
‘I’ am a man, a woman and a schoolboy until you know who the speaker is. It’s Schroedinger’s pronoun!
There are only two riddles. What you take as 2nd and 3rd are parts of the same one.
*
I’m always in motion but when I’m asleep
Can pleasantly laugh and mournfully weep
Yet what’s strange to believe the same token I show
For immoderate joy and immoderate woe.*
Answer:
[spoiler] A clock (?)
smiles at 10 past 10, weeps at 20 past 8 ?
[/spoiler]
If that’s the case (and the semicolon, which I missed, indicates you’re right), a dog could still be the answer. When he’s happy, he wags his tail; when he’s sad, he tucks it between his legs.
More precisely, I thought “March, 1760” was the end of the paragraph. Mea culpa!
Yeah, while I also liked other answers in this thread better, it seems like the riddle is basically “Who refers to themselves as ‘I’? Everyone!” If you put quote marks around the phrase “I am” in the original text then this meaning would be more obvious: “I am” both Man and Woman too…
It occurs to me that this may actually have been a sort of “Why do firefighters wear red suspenders?” unjoke playing on the conventional structure of this sort of riddle. I think it was common for the hints to be phrased in the first person, “I am [whatever]…” or “My [whatever] are…” Most people would presumably try to solve this riddle just as posters here did, by trying to think of a word (possibly with multiple meanings) that could refer to a man, a woman, and something associated with schools, but the going to school bit was a red herring while the words “I am” were (for once) the key.
not a clownfish?
Stop trying to make clownfish happen. It’s not going to happen.
Ha, I am a professional 
… and I did submit that answer. I assume he didn’t mention it because yeah, it’s not very entertaining or interesting or make much sense. Or whoever screens these things for him didn’t put it through.