1. The Great Giraffe Challenge Riddle and Standardized Testing

2. My name is Diane Phelps. I have a PhD in English Education. My specialty is the instruction and assessment of writing. Today I flunked the following Facebook riddle

3. I received this riddle from a high school classmate who studied Engineering and who also holds a degree in corporate finance: My new profile pic is a giraffe because I answered a riddle wrong. The deal is I give you a riddle. You get it right you get to keep your profile pic. You get it wrong and you change your profile pic to a Giraffe for the next 3 days. MESSAGE ME ONLY SO YOU DONT GIVE OUT THE ANSWER. Here is the riddle: 3:00 am, the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors, It's your parents and they are there for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese. What is the first thing you open? Remember... message me only. If you get it right I'll post your name here. If you get it wrong change your profile pic.

4. What does the fox say?

5. Without revealing the correct response, what follows are just some of the answers floating around in cyber space

6. Nothing! You cant make me get up in the middle of the night! Well, if I woke up, and then I heard the doorbellI must have opened my ears first Its my parents at 3am? It must be bad news The bottle of wine! sssd How do I know what time it is? How do I know my parents are there? How do I know what they want for breakfast? How I would open my MOUTH to YELL at my parents for bothering me!!! But what if its not my parents? I think I would open my shot gun case!

7. There is no wrong answer because language can be sly.

8. Writing is socially constructed and culturally embedded. This riddle reminds us that reader background knowledge varies and item context can be subjective.

9. We need to keep these things in mind when we stick our necks out discussing education reform! Maybe I ought to change my profile picture to a fox swwww

10. Did you correctly solve the great giraffe riddle? Do you think it is valid?