What Gets Bigger the More You Take Away?

Why a hole grows

A hole is the empty space left where something was removed. Take out a shovelful of dirt and the hole is bigger; take out another and it is bigger again. For almost everything else, taking away makes less. For a hole, taking away is how it is made.

It reads as a subtraction problem, so the listener keeps looking for an amount that grows as it shrinks. Nothing needs to shrink here. The hole is not a thing that gets smaller, because it is not a thing at all, only a place where a thing is missing.

The old form

The Handbook of Conundrums (Edith B. Ordway, 1915) asks it at greater length: "What is that which, the more you take from it, the larger it grows?" The book gives the answer as "A hole." The modern wording is shorter, and the answer is the same.

Acting it out

It is an easy riddle to try at a beach or in a sandbox. Each scoop that leaves the hole makes it a little bigger, so the answer grows in front of the listeners while they are still guessing.

A cousin with the opposite twist

The riddle about footsteps also plays on the word "take", but there the taking adds something behind you. Here the taking enlarges the empty space.