Duck, duck, horse

October 8, 2012 7:00 PM

Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or 1 horse-sized duck? That's not my question (much as I might like it to be). I'm trying to find the origin of this question, which was asked to President Obama recently.

The earliest cite I can find on-line is from 2003. Then practically nothing until 2010. Was this question original in 2003? Where did it go in the intervening years?

posted by Obscure Reference to writing & language (9 answers total)

Well, The Atlantic wasn't able to get to the bottom of it either.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:02 PM on October 8, 2012

Eponysterical ... Have you tried meme sites?
posted by tilde at 7:11 PM on October 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

knowyourmeme didn't even list it. Thanks for the Atlantic link, though. The only other reference I found was a pointer to a deleted question on yahoo who as to would win in a fight of 4 duck-sized horses against a horse-sized duck. The date was unclear.
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:32 PM on October 8, 2012

The 'Metro' article was referenced in a google cache of iamcal.com.
2003
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posted by unliteral at 8:08 PM on October 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

Looks like Zuckerman from the Atlantic is trying to find the source of the 'Metro' letter - Chris Brannick.
posted by unliteral at 8:16 PM on October 8, 2012

I'd imagine it probably came from Would You Rather?, either the original book or one of the many, many offshoot websites/forum threads etc.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:00 AM on October 9, 2012

Popbitch tends to ask celebrities who would win a fight between a baboon and a badger. It's possible someone just htought it was a funny question, asked it, and then it got picked up on later.
posted by mippy at 4:34 AM on October 9, 2012

A long-gone web site called World Wide Web Fights Grudge Match once asked "Which would win: a rottweiler or a rottweiler's weight in chihuahuas?" And I like to think that all of these questions since are merely descendants of that one Great Question.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:45 AM on October 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've also always seen that as a variant of the WWWF Grudge Match question.
posted by martinrebas at 7:59 AM on October 9, 2012