Ohne Lösung ist das schwierig - das muss ja passen. Vielleicht geht diese Übersetzung:

What happens once every minute, twice every moment, but never in a thousand years?

What occurs once in a minute, twice in every moment, but never in a thousand years?

Answer: M

Do I win a prize? :D

... muss es denn nicht "dreimal in jedem Moment" heißen???

Now that we know the answer, maybe "appear" is a better choice than "happen"?

What appears once every minute, twice every moment and never in a thousand years?

@3: No, there are only two Ms in moment... (and all the other letters only occur once).
@4: That's why I chose "occur".

Ist doch laaaangweilig!
Machen wir das Ganze etwas spannender!

@5: in "jedem Moment"

Q.E.D.


I also would prefer not to drop the "in", i.e. I'd use x's version in #2.

@7 LOL, OK... :)

that's not how I saw it... anyway, in English it's definitely 2...

don't need to write it all down again

yea well occur is totally wrong here. occur means "vorkommen" in a sense of mass murdering occured many times in history or something I'm not sure if it is clear what I'm going for here. but occure always states an event of some kind. it's more like happen. a letter in a word doesn't happen or occure. it appears.

so appear is definitely the right way to go. cheers to x

erm, letters can definitely occur in a text...

oc·cur   /əˈkɜr/ [uh-kur]
–verb (used without object), -curred, -cur·ring.
1. to happen; take place; come to pass: When did the accident occur?
2. to be met with or found; present itself; appear.
3. to suggest itself in thought; come to mind (usually fol. by to ): An idea occurred to me.

I dont think occur is "totally wrong". In fact, I think I just skipped over x's suggestion in #2 and saw the answer to the riddle and moved on.

Both appear and occur are equally good choices, imo.

You can leave "in" in the sentence too, but I think saying "occur once in a minute" can be interpreted to mean that something will happen once a minute from now. So, if you include in, it should probably say "every", to parallel the construction in "twice in every moment".

It occurs to me that there might be more than one meaning of "to occur".

@Lara Chu #11, it's a riddle, no?
Wouldn't mind if it's a bit hard to get at in the first place.

The discrepancy in the constructions tweaks my OCD, lol. :o) That's all.