Teacher shocked by child's answer to this puzzle - but can you guess the correct solution?

Despite their young age, children can have very profound thoughts - as one pupil has proved.

Teacher Bret Turner, from California, explained how one of his first-graders had given the philosophical answer "death" to his tricky puzzle of the week - leading to an "awed, somber [and] reflective hush" to fall across the room, the Daily Mail reports.

The riddle read: "I am the beginning of everything, the end of everywhere. I'm the beginning of eternity, the end of time & space. What am I?"

Bret explained how the first guess from one of his pupils was "death", while others included "all stuff", "the end" and "nothingthing".

He said that when he finally revealed the correct answer - which is the letter e - the class of pupils aged five to seven were "largely unimpressed".

Sharing the puzzle on Twitter, the teacher explained: "The first guess from one of my 1st graders was 'death' and such an awed, somber, reflective hush fell over the class that I didn’t want to tell them that actually the answer is the letter e, which just seemed so banal in the moment."

He added: "Before I finally revealed the 'correct' answer to the riddle, to a largely unimpressed audience, I fielded other guesses that continued along a similarly existential vein. 

"There was 'NOT everything,' 'all stuff,' 'the end,' and maybe my favorite, 'nothingthing.'" 

The teacher's story has since gone viral on Twitter, receiving over 73,000 retweets.

Social media users were left very impressed by the answer "death", describing it as a "better answer" than the letter e.

One person commented: "See, it's things like this (as well as my son's insights) that give me a lot of home for the future".  

Another added: "Gen Z are all existential nihilists aren't they".  

This article was first published on Daily Mail and is republished here with permission.