Are there more doors or wheels in the world? A debate divides the internet

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Yanny or Laurel? Is the dress blue and black or white and gold? These puzzling questions have fueled lively debates on the internet for decades. Now, a new debate is causing a stir online, and it has everyone stumped.

Ryan Nixon, who goes by @NewYorkNixon on Twitter, sparked a debate when he shared an idea that he and his friends devised. “My mates and I are having the STUPIDEST debate…And I am here for it,” he tweeted. “Do you think there are more doors or wheels in the world?”

Nixon attached a poll to his tweet, which was posted on Friday, 5 March. Since then, it has gained more than 1,000 replies and attracted 223,347 overall votes in just 24 hours. The poll saw wheels beat out doors, but only by about seven per cent. Regardless of the poll’s outcome, the mind-boggling question had people creating graphs and formulas to prove their answer.

Team Wheels

The results of the Twitter poll showed wheels receiving 53.6 per cent of the final vote. With more than one billion cars on the roads, plus wheel-operated machinery, many people believed there to be more wheels than doors in the world.

“Who is voting doors???” responded one person. “There’s wheels on everything. I have wheels on my garment rack, makeup storage holder, rubbish bin. It’s definitely wheels.”

Another said: “Very solidly wheels. All cars have 4 wheels but 2-4 doors. An average home might have 6-10 doors but it also has 3 suitcases with 6-12 wheels. A collection of toy cars might have 400 wheels.”

This Twitter user counted suitcases as having wheels as well. “How many suitcases with wheels on have you got in your house?” they asked. “I’ve got eight. That’s 32 wheels just there.”

And one person created an alignment chart to break down the existential concept of wheels. “I spent far too long on this please like and subscribe,” they said.

Team Doors

However, if suitcases count as wheels, then these people felt that sliding doors, cabinets, and refrigerators should also be fair game in this debate.

“Doors,” said one person. “Four door cars and trucks nullify themselves. All ships have doors, no wheels. All buildings have doors, no wheels. Doors.”

One Twitter user applied a ratio to justify their answer. “Doors by far,” they responded. “Most things with wheels have at least a 2:1 door-wheel ratio, and then you have all the other doors in the world.”

“In my household there are 29 doors including fridge, cupboards, washing machine, tumble dryer and car,” one person said. “Got 4 wheels on my car and the hamster has a wheel, can’t think of any more wheels I’m saying doors”.

This person even created a formula that found there are 40 billion doors in the world. “Using the ideology that wheels are only for vehicles and doors only count if they can be walked through,” they said. “Think it’s quite clear that doors win. Let me know if I’ve missed anything major or something needs explaining.”

It’s hard to tell who the real winner of the doors versus wheels debate is. Both sides presented strong evidence to support their cases. Truly, the only real lesson learned from this puzzle is that the internet loves a debate.