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Someone asked me a riddle today please help me answer.

Which five letter english word is it?
Where the 1st letter is the last letter.
The last letter is the 1st letter.
The middle letter is the second letter.
The second letter is the fifth letter.

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migrated from english.stackexchange.com Mar 26 '15 at 9:01

This question came from our site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts.

  • $\begingroup$ Well, since it's a riddle, it's probably a trick question, but the literal read on it is that the first, second, third, and fifth letters are all the same, and the fourth one may or may not differ. $\endgroup$ – Parthian Shot Mar 25 '15 at 0:50
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    $\begingroup$ It's 1st:A last:Z 2nd:B 5th:E ... ZEBRA $\endgroup$ – StoneyB Mar 25 '15 at 0:51
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    $\begingroup$ It's not a particularly difficult puzzle, but this question may have been better suited to the Puzzles SE than ELU. $\endgroup$ – Ian MacDonald Mar 25 '15 at 3:54
  • $\begingroup$ An interesting riddle but not a question for EL&U. $\endgroup$ – Centaurus Mar 25 '15 at 13:55
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Ah, having written this, I've just noticed StoneyB's comment above. So here is a rehash of StoneyB's answer in case you didn't read the comments: Answer:

Zebra: Z(last letter of the alphabet) E (fifth letter of the alphabet) B (second letter of the alphabet) R A (first letter of the alphabet).
So the first letter of the word is that last letter (in the alphabet), and so forth.

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  • $\begingroup$ the OP forgot to accept your answer. $\endgroup$ – Albrecht Hügli Jan 15 at 13:43
  • $\begingroup$ @AlbrechtHügli Thanks :-) I think the OP never made it over to puzzling from English Language and Usage stack exchange! (Where the question was first asked) $\endgroup$ – Araucaria Jan 15 at 13:46
  • $\begingroup$ I'll ask in the meta if in such cases there is a possibility that the answer is accepted by other users. But they will certainly say that the vote ups are saying this. yes, they say: puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6456/… $\endgroup$ – Albrecht Hügli Jan 15 at 13:49
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Answer:

ZEBRA

Explanation:

In each of the four hint-giving lines, the first part refers to the position within the five-letter word and the second part refers to location in the alphabet.

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