The rhyme does not explicitly state that the subject is an egg, possibly because it may have been originally posed as a riddle.

The reference as originally posed by Prime Minister Chrétien asked three questions:

Her eyes drifted back to Parnell, who had originally posed the question, subtly putting Walker Caine in his place again.

(This is originally posed as a ruse by Delphine Courtney to confuse and deceive Heather Hudson and the surviving members of Alpha Flight.)

The article's title question, though often attributed to Nagel, was originally posed by Timothy L.S. Sprigge.

The question was originally posed to him by philosopher William Molyneux, whose wife was blind:

--but could not locate the mind that had originally posed them.

The problem was originally posed in 1916 by Fujiwara and in 1917 by Wilhelm Blaschke, Hermann Rothe, and Roland Weitzenböck.

For the case of rational integer solutions (as Hilbert had originally posed it), the 4 squares trick shows that there is no algorithm for equations with no more than 36 unknowns.

The adjudicator, C. Jordan, had not been a member of the Academy when the problem was originally posed, and it seems from his official report that he was not apprised of Smith's priority.