riddles

A riddle is a form of word puzzle designed to test someone's ingenuity and lateral thinking in arriving at a solution.

Ancestry

Riddles have a distinguished literary ancestry, although the contemporary sort of conundrum that passes under the name of "riddle" may not make this obvious. Riddles occur extensively in Old English poetry, and also in the Old Norse literature of the Elder Edda and the skalds. The Exeter Book, a manuscript in Old English, preserves almost sixty versified riddles from the Old English literature. An example:

Moððe word fræt. Me þæt þuhte

wrætlicu wyrd, þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn,

þæt se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes,

þeof in þystro, þrymfæstne cwide

ond þæs strangan staþol. Stælgiest ne wæs

wihte þy gleawra, þe he þam wordum swealg.

A moth ate words.

I thought that was quite curious, that a mere worm, a thief in the dark, ate what a man wrote, his brilliant language and its strong foundation. The thief got no wiser for all that he fattened himself on words.

The answer called for by the poem is bookworm. The general technique is to obliquely refer to the subject by kenning and other sorts of figurative language; since kennings formed such an important element of alliterative verse forms in the Germanic languages, the riddles served the dual purpose of puzzling the poet's audience and teaching the lore needed to successfully use or understand the poetic language. The god Odin was a master of riddle lore, and sparred with several of his foes using contests of riddles. In the Vafthruthnismal, Odin defeats his foe by posing a question only he could possibly know the answer to.

Poetic Form

The poetic form became very popular in Victorian times, when each line of a classic riddle would describe individual letters or syllables of the solution, with the last line describing the complete answer, for example,

My first is in tea but not in leaf

My second is in teapot and also in teeth

My third is in caddy but not in cosy

My fourth is in cup but not in rosy

My fifth is in herbal and also in health

My sixth is in peppermint and always in wealth

My last is in drink, so what can I be?

I’m there in a classroom, do you listen to me?

The solution here is Teacher.

More generally, a riddle is any puzzling question. In the Hebrew Bible, the hero Samson proposes a riddle to the Philistines, which centered around Samson's discovery of honey in the carcass of a lion. (Judges 14) In Greek mythology, riddles were the province of the Sphinx, a female monster who challenged passersby with riddles; those who failed to guess them were devoured. She famously asked Oedipus, "What is the animal that goes about on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three in the evening?" The correct answer given by Oedipus was "Man," who crawls as a baby, walks upright as an adult, and goes with the help of a walking stick when elderly.

On the Indian subcontinent, Amir Khusro made the poetic riddles popular. An example:

(In Hindi)

Nar naari kehlaati hai,

aur bin warsha jal jati hai;

Purkh say aaway purkh mein jaai,

na di kisi nay boojh bataai.

English translation

Is known by both masculine and feminine names,

And lightens up (or burns up) without rain;

Originates from a man and goes into a man,

But no one has been able to guess what it is.

Riddle Game

The Riddle game is a contest of wits and skill, in mythology and folklore. It is a formalised version of solving riddles as a guessing game.

For example, in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, Gollum challenges Bilbo Baggins to a riddle competition; Bilbo wins the competition by asking Gollum, "What have I got in my pocket?" which Gollum cannot answer. The answer was the One Ring, which Gollum had lost and Bilbo had found. (Of course, many have pointed out that this is more of a "question" than a "riddle"; in the Foreword to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien pointed out that the rules of the competition stated that Gollum had indeed lost, as he attempted to answer it instead of pointing out that it wasn't much of a riddle. By accepting it, his loss was binding.) A similarly deceptive riddling contest features prominently in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. With the protagonists winning by asking the difference between a truck full of bowling balls and a truck full of woodchucks.

In Norse mythology, the king of the gods, Odin, like Bilbo, won such a contest by the questionable tactic of asking a question to which only he could know the answer. However, the adversary who accepts such a question is bound to honor the terms of the game.

Richard Wagner placed a riddle game in Act One of his opera Siegfried.

Modern television

In the Batman comic books, one of the hero's best known enemies is The Riddler who is personally compelled to supply clues about his upcoming crimes to his enemies in the form of riddles and puzzles. Stereotypically, they are the kind of simple riddles as described below, but modern treatments generally prefer to have the character use more sophisticated puzzles.

Charades

"Charades" are reported to have originated in France in the 18th century, and later spread across Europe and around the world. The first mention of charades in English was in a letter written in 1776 by Lady Boscawen, a Bluestocking and widow of Admiral Edward Boscawen. Early charades were usually in rhyming form, and contained a clue for each syllable ("my first", "my second",...) of a chosen word or phrase, followed by a clue about the entire word ("my whole"). Charades played a role in Jane Austen's Emma. One famous composer of such charades is Winthrop Mackworth Praed; others are Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Pope Leo XIII. An example of this form of charade, taken from an early American magazine in 1834, goes like this:

"My first, tho’ water, cures no thirst,

My next alone has soul,

And when he lives upon my first,

He then is called my whole."

The answer to this charade is "sea-man". Another, composed by Jane Austen herself, is this:

When my first is a task to a young girl of spirit,

And my second confines her to finish the piece,

How hard is her fate! but how great is her merit

If by taking my whole she effects her release!

The answer is "hem-lock".

This form of charade appeared in magazines, books, and on the folding fans of the Regency. The answers were sometimes printed on the reverse of the fan, suggesting that they were a flirting device, used by a young woman to tease her beau.

The name "charades" gradually became more popularly used to refer to acted charades. Examples of the acted charades are described in William Thackeray's Vanity Fair and in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

Contemporary riddles typically use puns and double entendres for humorous effect, rather than to puzzle the butt of the joke, as in:

When is a door not a door?

When it's ajar.

What's black and white and red (read) all over?

A newspaper.

What's brown and sounds like a bell?

Dung.

Why are all numbers afraid of number seven?

Because seven eight (ate) nine.

These riddles are now mostly children's humour and games rather than literary compositions.

Famous Riddles

"Old Mr. B! Riddle-me-ree! Hitty Pitty within the wall, Hitty Pitty without the wall; If you touch Hitty Pitty, Hitty Pitty will bite you!" - The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin

"Which creature in the morning goes on four feet, at noon on two, and in the evening upon three?" - Possibly the world's most famous riddle, which in Greek Mythology the Sphinx asked all those walking by. Any unable to answer was strangled by the sphinx, until Oedipus answered man, who crawls on four legs as a baby, walks on two during adulthood, and uses a cane during old age.

See also

• knock-knock joke
• Oedipus and the Sphinx
• Rumpelstiltskin
• The Da Vinci Game
• Online Puzzle

External links

• Only Riddles — One of the largest and easily used riddles sites.
• Riddles.com — over 25,000 rated riddles
• TheDailyRiddle.com — a collection of great riddles; new challenge set each day
• ToysForTheBrain.com — building a community for riddle lovers