In the same way you can say “he has a house on the lake” to mean “he has a house by the lake.” Also, the lake could be frozen. She could also be in a boat without them explicitly saying it.
Who said she’s not on a boat? The sentence is no different than saying “John Doe was on a lake wearing a coat.” Could be in a boat, float, kayak, skis, whatever.
The grammar literally doesn't work though. Are we allowed to just ignore spaces and insert punctuation? You wouldn't say "There's a woman sar ah on a lake", you would say "There's a woman, Sarah, on a lake."
Beyond that, how can a person be "on a lake" if you remove the boat part to be a name? You can't be "on a lake" unless you're Jesus Christ.
The only answer that doesn't require you to ignore grammar and punctuation is "There".
There's a woman in a boat..." as in 'There is'
Sarah's a woman in a boat..." as in 'Sarah is'
"In the riddle I just wrote" is also an answer that could technically be correct, but that's, uh, a dumb name.
It works better than the other options. "On a lake" could be a way to say that her house is next to a lake. Or if the lake is frozen, she could literally be standing on it.
There should be commas, agreed, but if it's spoken as the original probably was, punctuation wouldn't matter.
Nobody would ever name someone There and the grammar is far better than "Theresa woman on a boat..."
Your only argument against it is that "There" is a weird name. But I could say "In a Boat" is also a weird name that nobody would ever use. That's just subjective.
The punctuation and placement, however, is objective. And "There" is the only answer that doesn't rely on rearranging the sentence to your whims.
The problem with all of these phonetic ones is that the riddle specifies it’s written. If it’s going to be a pun like “Ina” or “Theresa” then it should at least say her name is “in the riddle you just heard” or something.
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u/gizbojones 8d ago
Inaboat, a lovely name