The riddle
What Building Has the Most Stories?
Floors and tales
Merriam-Webster lists two unrelated-looking meanings of story. One is a tale, true or invented. The other is a floor or level of a building, spelled storey in British English. The question reads like a contest between skyscrapers, and a listener starts picturing the tallest. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, for instance, has 163 floors according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. The answer sidesteps all of that by choosing the other meaning: a library is a building full of stories to read.
How a floor became a story
Online Etymology Dictionary traces the building sense to Anglo-Latin historia, the same Latin word that gave English history and story. One explanation, which the dictionary offers as a possibility, is that early buildings had rows of painted windows or sculptures that told stories, and each row became a tier. So the two meanings share a root after all.
Counting a big library
The Library of Congress in Washington says its collections hold more than 170 million items. Not every item is a story, since the total includes maps, music and photographs, but books of every kind sit among them.
Which sense comes first?
Most listeners go to floors, then drop the idea when the answer arrives. If a group cannot guess, ask what is kept inside a library. The word tales usually follows within seconds. A listener who answers skyscraper has taken the floors meaning, and asking how many tales a skyscraper holds usually brings the second meaning into view. For a riddle that asks the listener to read a holiday question another way, see when does Christmas come before Thanksgiving.