Let f be a transcendental entire function, and let U, V ⊂ C be disjoint simply-connected domains. Must one of f −1 (U ) and f −1 (V ) be disconnected?In 1970, Baker [Bak70] implicitly gave a positive answer to this question, in order to prove that a transcendental entire function cannot have two disjoint completely invariant domains.It was recently observed by Julien Duval that there is a flaw in Baker's argument (which has also been used in later generalisations and extensions of Baker's result). We show that the answer to the above question is negative; so this flaw cannot be repaired. Indeed, for the function f (z) = e z + z, there is a collection of infinitely many pairwise disjoint simply-connected domains, each with connected preimage. We also answer a long-standing question of Eremenko by giving an example of a transcendental meromorphic function, with infinitely many poles, which has the same property.Furthermore, we show that there exists a function f with the above properties such that additionally the set of singular values S(f ) is bounded; in other words, f belongs to the Eremenko-Lyubich class. On the other hand, if S(f ) is finite (or if certain additional hypotheses are imposed), many of the original results do hold.For the convenience of the research community, we also include a description of the error in the proof of [Bak70], and a summary of other papers that are affected.