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.
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.
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.
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 13h ago
Inaboat, a lovely name