why or how is a raven like a writing desk?

The riddle has no answer. If you’ve seen Alice in Wonderland you will know.

Originally, this was intended as a riddle without any answer –

However, over subsequent years, so many people asked Lewis Carroll for the answer that in the preface to the 1896 edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” he wrote:

“Enquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter’s Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, viz:

‘Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!’ This, however, is merely an afterthought; the riddle as originally invented, had no answer at all.”

His misspelling of “Nevar” made the riddle work, however his editors corrected this to “Never”, which doesn’t answer the riddle properly.

Over time, people came up with another answer to the riddle:

“Because Edgar Allen Poe wrote on both of them”. In other words he wrote on (about) a raven in his famous poem “The Raven”, and he wrote on a writing desk, as writers tend to do…

I’ve also heard people say “Because they both have inky quills” as a possible answer. The writing desk, in the old days, would have a quill pen that would be dipped in ink, and a raven’s quills, or feathers, are naturally black, or “inky”.