White bird featherless

Flew from Paradise,

Perched upon the castle wall;

Up came Lord John landless,

Took it up handless,

And rode away horseless to the King's white hall.^[31]

Here, a snowflake falls from the sky, and is blown off by the wind.

Ancient and medieval riddles

The riddle was at times a prominent literary form in the ancient and medieval world, and so riddles are extensively, if patchily, attested in our written records from these periods.

Babylon

According to Archer Taylor, "the oldest recorded riddles are Babylonian school texts which show no literary polish". The answers to the riddles are not preserved; they include "my knees hasten, my feet do not rest, a shepherd without pity drives me to pasture" (a river? A rowboat?); "you went and took the enemy's property; the enemy came and took your property" (a weaving shuttle?); "who becomes pregnant without conceiving, who becomes fat without eating?" (a raincloud?). "It is clear that we have here riddles from oral tradition that a teacher has put into a schoolbook."^[32]

Sanskrit and later Indic languages

It is thought that the world's earliest surviving poetic riddles survive in the Sanskrit Rigveda.^[33] "The Sanskrit term that most closely corresponds to the English 'riddle', and which is usually translated thereby, is prahelikā—a term that is not only of uncertain etymology but is also subject to widely differing interpretations and classifications."^[34]

Hymn 164 of the first book of the Rigveda can be understood to comprise a series of riddles or enigmas^[35] which are now obscure but may have been an enigmatic exposition of the pravargya ritual.^[36] These riddles overlap in significant part with a collection of forty-seven in the Atharvaveda; riddles also appear elsewhere in Vedic texts.^[37][38] According to Taylor,

The highly sophisticated quality of many Sanskrit riddles can perhaps be adequately illustrated by one rather simple example ... "Who moves in the air? Who makes a noise on seeing a thief? Who is the enemy of lotuses? Who is the climax of fury?" The answers to the first three questions, when combined in the manner of a charade, yield the answer to the fourth question. The first answer is bird (vi), the second dog (çva), the third sun (mitra), and the whole is Viçvamitra, Rama's first teacher and counselor and a man noted for his outbursts of rage.^[39]

Accordingly, riddles are treated in early studies of Sanskrit poetry such as Daṇḍin's seventh- or eighth-century Kāvyādarśa, the Kāvyālaṃkāra of Bhāmaha (c. 700), or the fifteenth-century Sāhityadarpaṇa by Viśwanātha Kaviraja.^[40] Thus, for example, Daṇḍin cites this as an example of a name-riddle (nāmaprahelikā): "A city, five letters, the middle one is a nasal, the ruling lineage of which is an eight-letter word" (the answer being Kāñcī, ruled by the Pallavāḥ dynasty).^[41]

Early narrative literature also sometimes includes riddles. The Mahabharata also portrays riddle-contests and includes riddles accordingly.^[42] For example, this portrays Yaksha Prashna, a series of riddles posed by a nature-spirit (yaksha) to Yudhishthira,^[42] and, in the third book, the story of Ashtavakra. Ashtavakra is the son of one Kahoda, who loses a wisdom-contest to Bandin and is drowned in consequence. Though only a boy, Ashtavakra goes to the court of King Janaka to seek revenge on Bandin. On arrival, he is presented with a series of riddles by Janaka, starting with the widespread year-riddle: what has six naves, twelve axles, twenty-four joints, and three hundred and sixty spokes? (The year.) Janaka then asks a mythic riddle about thunder and lightning, and then a series of simpler, paradox-based riddles like 'what does not close its eye when asleep?' Having won Janaka's approval, Ashtavakra goes on to defeat Bandin in a further wisdom-contest, and has Bandin drowned.^[43] Meanwhile, Baital Pachisi (Tales of a Vetala), originating before the twelfth century CE, features twenty four tales, each culminating in a riddle or similar puzzle. Unusually, the challenge here is for the hero to not solve a riddle.^[44]

The first riddle collection in a medieval Indic language is traditionally thought to be by Amir Khusro (1253–1325), though it is debated whether he actually composed the collection.^[45] If he did, he wrote his riddles in the Indic language he called Hindawi rather than his usual Persian. It contains 286 riddles, divided into six groups, "apparently on the basis of the structure of the riddle and the structure of the answer"; "these riddles are 'in the style of the common people', but most scholars believe they were composed by Khusro".^[46] The riddles are in Mātrika metre; one example is:

aur bin warsha jal jati hai;

Purkh say aaway purkh mein jaai,

na di kisi nay boojh bataai.}}

Is known by both masculine and feminine names,

And burns up without rain;

Originates from a man and goes into a man,

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

The emboldened text here indicates a clue woven into the text: it is a pun on nadi ("river").

Old Testament and Hebrew riddles

While riddles are not numerous in the Bible, they are present, most famously in Samson's riddle in Judges xiv.14, but also in I Kings 10:1–13 (where the Queen of Sheba tests Solomon's wisdom), and in the Talmud.^[47] Sirach also mentions riddles as a popular dinner pastime.

The Aramaic Story of Ahikar contains a long section of proverbial wisdom that in some versions also contains riddles.^[48]

However, under the influence of Arabic literature in medieval al-Andalus, there was a flourishing of literary Hebrew riddles in verse during the Middle Ages. Dunash ben Labrat (920–990), credited with transposing Arabic metres into Hebrew, composed a number of riddles, mostly apparently inspired by folk-riddles.^[49] Exponents included Moses ibn Ezra, Yehuda Alharizi, and Judah Halevi.^[47] Immanuel the Roman wrote riddles, as did Israel Onceneyra.^[50]

Ancient Greece and Rome

Riddles are known to have been popular in Greece in Hellenistic times, and possibly before; they were prominent among the entertainments and challenges presented at symposia.^[51] Oracles were also represented as speaking in often riddlic language.^[52] However, the first significant corpus of Greek riddles survives in an anthology of earlier material known as the Greek Anthology, which contains about 50 verse riddles,^[53] probably put into its present form by Constantine Cephalas, working in the tenth century CE.^[54] Most surviving ancient Greek riddles are in verse.^[55] In the second chapter of Book III of Aristotle's Rhetoric, the philosopher stated that "good riddles do, in general, provide us with satisfactory metaphors: for metaphors imply riddles, and therefore a good riddle can furnish a good metaphor."^[56]

Literary riddles were also composed in Byzantium, from perhaps the tenth century with the work of John Geometres, into the fifteenth century, along with a neo-Byzantine revival in around the early eighteenth century. There was a particular peak around the long twelfth century.^[57]

Two Latin riddles are preserved as graffiti in the Basilica at Pompeii.^[58] The most eminent collection of ancient Latin riddles is a collection of 100 hexametrical riddles by Symphosius which were influential on later medieval Latin writers. The Bern Riddles, a collection of Latin riddles clearly modelled on Symphosius, were composed in the early seventh century by an unknown author, perhaps in northern Italy. Symphosius's collection also inspired a number of Anglo-Saxon riddlers who wrote in Latin.^[59] They remained influential in medieval Castilian tradition, being the basis for the second set of riddles in the thirteenth-century Libro de Apolonio, posed by Apolonio's daughter Tarsiana to her father.^[60] The perhaps eighth- or ninth-century Veronese Riddle is a key witness to the linguistic transition from Latin to Romance.

Arabic and Persian

In the medieval period, verse riddles, alongside other puzzles and conundra, became a significant literary form in the Arabic-speaking world,^[61] and accordingly in Islamic Persian culture.^[62] Since early Arabic and Persian poetry often features rich, metaphorical description, and ekphrasis, there is a natural overlap in style and approach between poetry generally and riddles specifically; literary riddles are therefore often a subset of the descriptive poetic form known in both traditions as wasf. Riddles are attested in anthologies of poetry and in prosimetrical portrayals of riddle-contests in Arabic maqāmāt and in Persian epics such as the Shahnameh. Several stories in One Thousand and One Nights involve riddles. In both Arabic and Persian, riddles seem to have become increasingly scholarly in style over time, increasingly emphasising riddles and puzzles in which the interpreter has resolve clues to letters and numbers to put together the word which is the riddle's solution.

In Al-Andalus, Arabic riddles had a significant influence on Hebrew poetry, inspiring similar riddling in that language.

Riddles have been collected by modern scholars throughout the Arabic-speaking world.^[63]

The medieval Germanic-speaking world

Riddles survive only fragmentarily in Old High German: three, very short, possible examples exist in manuscripts from the Monastery of St Gallen, but, while certainly cryptic,^[64] they are not necessarily riddles in a strict sense.^[65] About 150 survive in Middle High German, mostly quoted in other literary contexts.^[66][67][68] Likewise, riddles are rare in Old Norse: almost all occur in one section of Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, in which the god Óðinn propounds around 37 riddles (depending on the manuscript).^[69] These riddles do, however, provide insights into Norse mythology, medieval Scandinavian social norms, and rarely attested poetic forms.^[70]

By contrast, verse riddles were prominent among Anglo-Saxons, made a prominent literary form by the Anglo-Saxon Aldhelm (c. 639–709), writing in Latin and inspired by the fourth- or fifth-century Latin poet Symphosius. He was followed by a number of other Anglo-Saxons writing riddles in Latin. This prestigious literary heritage contextualises the survival of nearly one hundred riddles in the tenth-century Exeter Book, one of the main surviving collections of Old English verse. The riddles in this book vary in subject matter from ribald innuendo to theological sophistication. Three, Exeter Book Riddle 35 and Riddles 40/66, are in origin translations of riddles by Aldhelm (and Riddle 35 the only Old English riddle to be attested in another manuscript besides the Exeter Book). Unlike the pithy three-line riddles of Symphosius, the Old English riddles tend to be discursive, often musing on complex processes of manufacture when describing artefacts such as mead (Exeter Book Riddle 27) or a reed-pen or -pipe (Exeter Book Riddle 60). They are noted for providing perspectives on the world which give voice to actors which tend not to appear in Old English poetry, ranging from female slaves to animals and plants, and they often subvert the conventions of Old English heroic and religious poetry.

The medieval Celtic-speaking world

Few riddles are attested in medieval Celtic languages. One riddle is attested in medieval Welsh, an elaborate text entitled 'Canu y Gwynt' ('song of the wind') in the fourteenth-century Book of Taliesin probably inspired by Latin riddles on the same theme. However, this record is supplemented by Latin material, apparently from a Brittonic cultural background in North Britain, about Lailoken: in a twelfth-century text, Lailoken poses three riddles to his captor King Meldred.^[71]

The earliest riddles attested in Irish are generally held to be found in a short collection from the fifteenth-century Book of Fermoy.^[72][73] However, other forms of wisdom contest do occur in Irish literature, such as The Colloquy of the Two Sages, first attested in twelfth-century manuscripts, and in one such contest, in Imthecht na Tromdaime, first attested in the fifteenth century, at least one riddle is arguably posed.^[74]

Even research on the post-medieval Celtic-speaking world has yielded a "comparatively meagre corpus".^[75]

Post-medieval riddles

Europe

The German-speaking world

With the advent of print in the West, collections of riddles and similar kinds of questions began to be published. A large number of riddle collections were printed in the German-speaking world and, partly under German influence, in Scandinavia.^[76] Riddles were evidently hugely popular in Germany: a recent research project uncovered more than 100,000 early modern German riddles, with the most important collection being that Strassburger Rätselbuch, first published around 1500 and many times reprinted.^[77] This is one of the most famous riddles of that time:

saß auf dem Baume blattlos,

da kam die Jungfer mundlos

und fraß den Vogel federlos

von dem Baume blattlos.}}

There came a bird featherless

sat on the trees leafless

There came a maiden speechless

And ate the bird featherless

From off the tree leafless.}}

That is, "the snow (featherless bird) lies on a bare tree in winter (leafless tree), and the sun (speechless maiden) causes the snow to melt (ate the featherless bird)".^[78]

The Finnic-speaking world

The corpus of traditional riddles from the Finnic-speaking world (including the modern Finland, Estonia, and parts of Western Russia) is fairly unitary, though eastern Finnish-speaking regions show particular influence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Slavonic riddle culture. The Finnish for "riddle" is arvoitus (pl. arvoitukset), related to the verb arvata ("guess").

Finnic riddles are noteworthy in relation to the rest of the world's oral riddle canon for its original imagery, their abundance of sexual riddles, and the interesting collision of influences from east and west;^[79] along with the attestation in some regions of an elaborate riddle-game.^[80] Riddles provide some of the first surviving evidence for Finnish-language literature.^[81]

The English-speaking world

The seminal collection of Anglophone riddles from the early modern period through to the twentieth century is Archer Taylor's.^[82]

Since the early medieval period, the riddle has become rare as a literary form in English. However, as elsewhere in Europe, early modern English-speakers published printed riddle collections, such as the 1598 Riddles of Heraclitus and Democritus, which includes for example the following riddle:

Riddles are also prominent in some early-modern ballads. Some of those included in the Child Ballads are "Riddles Wisely Expounded" (Child 1), "The Elfin Knight" (Child 2), "King John and the Bishop" (Child 45), "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" (Child 46), and "Proud Lady Margaret" (Child 47).^[84] In an unusual example of literary riddling, Jonathan Swift composed at least eight verse riddles on these such as a pen, gold, and the privy, but this was seen as a lapse in taste by many of his contemporaries.^[21]

Contemporary riddles typically use puns and double entendres for humorous effect,{{citation needed|date=August 2013}} rather than to puzzle the butt of the joke, as in "Why is six afraid of seven?" "Because seven eight nine (eight can be replaced with ate)." These riddles are now mostly children's humour and games rather than literary compositions.

Some riddles are composed of foreign words and play on similar sounds, as in:

There were two cats, 1 2 3 cat and un deux trois cat, they had a swimming race from England to France. Who won?

1 2 3 Cat because Un deux trois quatre cinq (un deux trois cat sank)

The previous plays on the fact that the French words for 4 and 5 are pronounced similar to the English words "Cat" and "Sank", hence the pun being the cat sank while also counting to 5 in French.

Although riddles are seldom used today as a literary form in their own right, they have arguably influenced the approach to poetry of a number of twentieth-century poets, such as Francis Ponge, Wallace Stevens, Richard Wilbur, Rainer M. Rilke, and Henrikas Radauskas.^[85] The famed Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote "All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle".^[86]

French

Early modern printed riddle collections were also published in French, including the Adevineaux amoureux (printed in Bruges by Colard Mansion around 1479); and Demandes joyeuses en maniere de quolibets, the basis for Wynkyn de Worde's 1511 Demaundes Joyous.^[87]

Asia

China

Few riddles are attested in ancient Chinese literature, possibly because Chinese scholarship viewed the form as inappropriate to highbrow literature. It is, however, known that riddles existed.^[88] For example, the posing and solving of riddles has long been an important part of the Chinese Lantern Festival; "the date of the origin of the lantern riddle is not definite, but according to Japanese writers it probably first became popular during the Northern Sung dynasty (960–1126), and became associated with the Feast of Lanterns during the 17th century".^[89]

However, in the twentieth century, thousands of riddles and similar enigmas have been collected. Chinese benefits from a large number of homophones. Examples of folk-riddles include:

• There is a small vessel filled with sauce, one vessel holding two different kinds. (Egg)
• Washing makes it more and more dirty; it is cleaner without washing. (Water)
• There is a big rooster. When it sees someone, then it makes a bow. (Tea pot)
• A certain family lived in two courts with many children in each, and, strange to say, the greater were less than the lesser and the less were more than the greater. (Abacus)
• When I go out, I am thick and fat. When I come home, I am meager like a skeleton. Then I am put in a corner against the wall and my tears flow freely. (Umbrella)
• When you use it you throw it away, and when you do not use it you bring it back. (Anchor)^[90]

Chinese riddles make much use of visual puns on Chinese characters.^[91] One example is the riddle "千 里 会 千 金"; these characters respectively mean 'thousand kilometre meet thousand gold'.

1. The first stage of solving the riddle is verbal:
   1. In Chinese culture, "it is said that a good horse can run thousands of kilometers per day", so "千 里" (thousand kilometer) is resolved as "马" (horse).
   2. Meanwhile, because "a daughter is very important in the family", in Chinese culture it is possible to resolve "千 金" (thousand gold) as "女" (daughter).
2. The second stage of solving the riddle is visual: combining the radical "马" (horse) with the radical "女" (daughter) produces the character "妈" (mother).

Thus the answer to "thousand kilometres meet thousand gold" is "妈" (mother).^[92]

One modern, bilingual collection of Chinese riddles has been published by William Dolby.^[93]

The Philippines

Quite similar to its English counterpart, the riddle in the Philippines is called Bugtong.^[94] It is traditionally used during a funeral wake together with other games such as tong-its or the more popular sakla, later generations use Bugtong as a form of past time or as an activity. One peculiarity of the Filipino version is the way they start with the phrase Bugtong-bugtong before saying the riddle, usually it is common to create riddles that rhyme.

An example of a Tagalog Bugtong:

ang suot ay sari-sari.}}

Riddle-riddle, not a king, nor a priest,

but dresses for a feast.|attr2=Clothes line}}

Similarly, a bit south, in Sulawesi, Indonesia, among the Pendau, riddles are also used at funeral gatherings.^[95]

Tamil

In Tamil, riddles are called Vidukathai. They circulate in both folk and literary forms.^[96]

Riddles are of type^[97]

• Descriptive
• Question
• Rhyming
• Fun

Riddles are mostly found in oral form. The structure resembles folk songs. Most of the riddles are based on the living things and objects around our day-to-day life.^[97]

A sample riddle is given below.^[98]

vitintu parttal, veruntottam. atu enna?}}

If the sun sets, a flower-garden;

but if you look at it after dawn, an empty garden. What is it?|attr2=The sky}}

Africa

Anthropological research in Africa has produced extensive collections of riddles over the last century or so.^[99] Riddles have been characterised as "one of the most important forms of oral art in Africa";^[100] Hamnett analyzes African riddling from an anthropological viewpoint;^[101] Yoruba riddles have enjoyed a recent monograph study.^[102]

The Americas

Native American traditions

Riddles in the Americas are of particular interest to scholarship because it was long thought that native American cultures had no autochthonous riddle traditions (as opposed to riddles inspired by European culture, as with the twenty-two Aztec riddles collected by Bernardino de Sahagún in the sixteenth century).^[103][104] If so, this would have suggested that riddles are not a universal art form.^[105] However, Hieronymus Lalemant gave a fairly detailed account of a riddle-contest among the Huron around 1639 as part of a healing ritual.^[106]

Someone will say, "What I desire and what I am seeking is that which bears a lake within itself;" and by this is intended a pumpkin or calabash. Another will say, "What I ask for is seen in my eyes—it will be marked with various colors"; and because the same Huron word that signifies "eye" also signifies "glass bead", this is a clue to divine what he desires—namely, some kind of beads of this material, and of different colors.

Accordingly, during the twentieth century, progressively more substantial collections of Native American riddles were made, including from the Alaskan Athabaskans (Ten'a) people in British Columbia;^[107][108] Amuzgo people in Central America;^[109] and Quechua people in South America.^[110] Thus, while data remains rather thin, it seems clear that riddling did exist in the Americas independently of European culture.

Colonial traditions

Riddles are found extensively in the settler-colonial cultures of the Americas.

One form of riddle features in payada de contrapunto (“counterpoint payada”), a Rioplatense musical genre in which guitar players compete in a symbolic duel.^[111] Two guitar players challenge each other in song by asking a riddle-like question and/or answering the opponent’s questions. This is performed through several successive rounds of witty exchanges which may include banter and even insults—typically with a humorous intent. The most famous literary example of counterpoint payada comes from Martín Fierro, Part 2, Song 30, verses 6233-6838.^[112]

Riddle-contests

The Riddle Game is a formalized guessing game, a contest of wit and skill in which players take turns asking riddles. The player that cannot answer loses. Riddle games occur frequently in mythology and folklore as well as in popular literature.

It is important to understand that in many cultures or contexts, people are not actually expected to guess the answers to riddles: they may be told by the riddler, or learn riddles and their answers together as they grow up.^[113] Thus riddle-contests are not the only or even necessarily the main forum for the expression of riddles.

The unsolvable riddle with which literary characters often win a riddle-contest is sometimes referred to as neck-riddle.

In real life

It seems that in ancient Greece, riddle-competitions were popular as an intellectual entertainment at symposia.^[114] A key source for this culture is Athenaeus.^[115]

Elaborate and unusual riddle-games took place in the culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Finnish-language riddles.^[80] For example, Elias Lönnrot observed customary riddle-contests in nineteenth-century Finland:

It took place without teams, but was a kind of a contest: a member of the group would be sent out of the room, the others agreed on the riddle to be posed; for three failures to divine the answer, the riddlee would have to drop out of the game, to step aside, and to "buy" with a token the right to participate again.^[99]

In ancient, medieval, and folk literature

In older texts, riddle-contests frequently provide the frame stories whereby riddles have been preserved for posterity. Such contests are a subset of wisdom contests more generally. They tend to fall into two groups: testing the wisdom of a king or other aristocrat; and testing the suitability of a suitor. Correspondingly, the Aarne–Thompson classification systems catalogue two main folktale-types including riddle-contests: AT 927, Outriddling the Judge, and AT 851, The Princess Who Can Not Solve the Riddle.^[116]

In modern literature

• In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit Gollum challenges Bilbo Baggins to a riddle competition for his life. Bilbo breaks "the ancient rules" of the game but is able to escape with Gollum's magic ring. As happens in the Norse tale, although Bilbo asked more of a simple question than a riddle, by attempting to answer it rather than challenging it Gollum accepted it as a riddle; by accepting it, his loss was binding.^[117]

• In The Grey King, the third book of Susan Cooper's fantasy sequence The Dark is Rising, Will and Bran must win a riddle game in order for Bran to claim his heritage as the Pendragon.

• In Patricia A. McKillip's The Riddle-Master trilogy, the ancient art of riddlery is taught at the College of Caithnard – the study based on books recovered from the ruins of the School of Wizards. The riddles in the series are composed of three parts – the question, the answer, and the stricture – and are both a way of recording history and a guide to living life. Riddles play a crucial role in the series, the main protagonist, Morgon of Hed, beginning his journey by winning the crown of the kings of Aum in a Riddle Game with the ancient ghost of Peven of Aum; Peven had a standing wager going that no one could win a riddle-game with him, and those who lost against him forfeited their lives. "Beware the unanswered riddle."

• In Stephen King's The Waste Lands and Wizard and Glass, the ka-tet must riddle against Blaine the Mono in order to save their lives. At first Blaine can answer all riddles posed to him by the ka-tet easily, but then Eddie Dean, one of the ka-tet, gains the upper hand when he starts to ask joke riddles, effectively frustrating Blaine's highly logical mind.

• 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 these kinds of simple children's riddles, but modern treatments generally prefer to have the character use more sophisticated puzzles.

See also

• Droodles
• Missing dollar riddle
• Newspaper riddle
• Oedipus and the Sphinx
• Rumpelstiltskin
• Riddles (Anglo-Saxon)
• Riddles (Arabic)
• Riddles (Finnic)
• Riddles (Greek)
• Riddles (Hebrew)
• Riddles (Persian)
• Riddle joke
• Charades
• Neck riddle

References

External links

• Puzzles And Riddles – A mix of both original and classic riddles.
• Funny Riddles with Answers – Collection of funny riddles online.
• [https://riddlesdb.com/ RiddlesDB] – Riddles With Answers.
• [https://riddles.net Riddles.net] – A collection of riddles with answers for all ages.
• {{dmoz|Games/Puzzles/Brain_Teasers/Riddles/|Riddles}} – An active listing of riddle links.
• Riddle Mastery