Words that end in -gry

(Not really. Click on the painting to find out more about the artist.)

Actually, many words end in -gry, including gry itself, although all but angry and hungry are rare, foreign, obscure or obsolete.The most common "answers" are aggry, a burial bead from Ghana, puggry, a scarf worn around the neck in India to protect the head from the sun, and anhungry, an obsolete form of hungry that was used once in one of Shakespeare's less-popular plays (Coriolanus, Act I, Scene I, line 209); this association with the Bard is enough to earn it a place in Merriam-Webster's Third New International (unabridged) Dictionary of the English Language. More words that end in -gry are listed below.

Gry is also, alone by itself, a word. In fact it's two completely separate words that can be found in large unabridged English dictionaries. (According to Merriam-Webster's Second New International (unabridged) Dictionary of the English Language, originally published in 1934, both are pronounced to rhyme with "cry.") One gry comes from Romany (the language of the Gypsies) and means "horse". The other gry comes from Greek and means "a trifle, a very small amount, a very short line". In the latter sense it has been used as an actual unit of measurement

"But none of those are the answer," you groan. "None of those are the third word." And you're right. None of them are. There is no answer.

The puzzle is WRONG.

"It's a fraud, it's a fake," says Will Shortz, who is the puzzle editor of the New York Times and the host of a puzzle segment on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition (NPR, 11/10/96). The actual truth is that

NO other common English word ends in -gry! It's a trick question -- and the trick, at least in some versions, has been lost.

Thus there are a whole lot of "right answers" that have been proposed, depending on the wording of the puzzle as the person heard it. None of these are THE right answer, because there are so many different, mangled versions of the puzzle. Many people think there must be, though, or even that the version of the puzzle they've heard is the only true version, and its answer the only true answer. This is far from the case. As the puzzle has spread and permutated, there are many separate versions that are purported to be the "true" version and many separate answers purported to be the "true" answer.

Word-puzzle fans and reference librarians have been trying for years to track the question's history to find the original "right" answer. But to do that we need to know what the original wording of the question was.

A very early version, found in an old book by a member of the Stumpers list, goes like this:

"There are three words in the English language that end with 'gry'. Two of these are angry and hungry. The third word is a very common word, and you use it often. If you have read what I have told you, you will see that I have given you the third word. What is the third word? Think very carefully."

The next page of the book gave this answer:

"Three, the question has nothing to do with angry, hungry, or any of the many other obscure words that end in 'gry', it is a simple question asking you what the third word in the sentence is. As you take tests, remember this."

The full text of the e-mail containing this version is quoted at the bottom of this page.

As asked on the Bob Grant radio show (New York City) in 1975, which many experts believe to be the earliest documented version, it went:

"There are only 3 words in the English language, all adjectives, which end in -gry. Two are angry and hungry; the third word describes the state of the world today. What is it?"

(Several sources say this was "taken from an old book", which leaves open the question of whether it was from the same book referred to in the e-mail above, or whether there were already multiple forms of the puzzle going around.)

According to Ross Eckler of Word Ways magazine, while there are "nearly one hundred" words ending in -gry, none of them are common. But only one of them (besides angry and hungry) is an adjective, and that is meagry, a word found in the Oxford English Dictionary which means "meager." So meagry would seem to answer the question, at least in this form.

Yet another version that many believe is the original, "right" form of the question, goes thus:

"Two words that end in -gry are 'angry' and 'hungry'. There are three

words in the English language. What is the third word? It's a common word

that everyone knows."

In this case, the answer is the third word in the phrase "the English language", i.e. "language"! The part about "angry and hungry" turns out to be a red herring. (from COPYEDITING-L list and the rec.puzzles Usenet newsgroup's FAQ) People who don't know the trick to this puzzle, by changing the wording when they pass the question along, have mangled the question until there is no real answer! Most people now seem to accept this as the "real" answer.

A similar suggestion (from Charles Wiedemann of Hackettstown, NJ, printed in Marilyn Vos Savant's column in Parade magazine March 9, 1997) is that the original form was

"There are at least three words in the English language that end in G or Y.

One of them is "hungry" and another one is "angry". There is a third word, a

short one which you probably say every day. If you are listening carefully to

everything I say, you just heard me say it three times. What is it?"

When the listener gives up, you explain: "You assumed I said "G-R-Y", but in fact I said "G or Y", and the word is "say". Because so many people read Parade as part of their Sunday newspaper, this version is gaining ground.

The other word ending in -gry by Dave Friedman at http://www.fun2play.com/gry/ has still more links and yet another solution ("What is the third word" is not a question but the answer, he suggests)! Useless Knowledge (an apt summary of this whole thing!) quotes the form of the puzzle that would give this answer as follows:

There are two words that end with "gry".

Angry is one and hungry is another.

What is the third word.

Everyone uses it every day and

Everyone knows what it means.

If you have been listening,

I have already told you what the word is.

Notice that the third line "sounds" like a question when read.

In this version, what is the answer to the puzzle! (At least, I guess, when he's not playing second base.)

Still another variation which appeared on Stumpers is worded as follows:

There are three words in the English language that end in gry. The first ONE is hungry, the second is angry, and the third everyONE uses everyday. If you have read this carefully I have given a clue.

Worded this way, with such emphasis on "one", one could make the case that one possible answer is "one", in other words, the "third ONE".