Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn's 1638 The Wedding of Samson, depicting Samson (right of centre) posing Samson's riddle.
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A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and conundra, which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer.
Archer Taylor says that "we can probably say that riddling is a universal art" and cites riddles from hundreds of different cultures including Finnish, Hungarian, American Indian, Chinese, Russian, Dutch and Filipino sources amongst many others.[1] Many riddles and riddle-themes are internationally widespread. However, at least in the West, if not more widely, "riddles have in the past few decades ceased to be part of oral tradition", being replaced by other oral-literary forms, and by other tests of wit such as quizzes.[2]
In the assessment of Elli Köngas Maranda (originally writing about Malaitian riddles, but with an insight that has been taken up more widely), whereas myths serve to encode and establish social norms, "riddles make a point of playing with conceptual boundaries and crossing them for the intellectual pleasure of showing that things are not quite as stable as they seem" – though the point of doing so may still ultimately be to "play with boundaries, but ultimately to affirm them".[3]
Contents
1Definitions and research
1.1Definitions
1.2Research
2International riddles
2.1The Writing-riddle
2.2The Year-riddle
2.3The Person-riddle
2.4Two-legs, three-legs, and four-legs
2.5The Cow-riddle
2.6The Rider-and-horse riddle
2.7The Featherless bird-riddle
3Ancient and medieval riddles
3.1Babylon
3.2Sanskrit and later Indic languages
3.3Old Testament and Hebrew riddles
3.4Ancient Greece and Rome
3.5Arabic and Persian
3.6The medieval Germanic-speaking world
3.7The medieval Celtic-speaking world
4Post-medieval riddles
4.1Europe
4.1.1The German-speaking world
4.1.2The Finnic-speaking world
4.1.3The English-speaking world
4.1.4French
4.2Asia
4.2.1China
4.2.2The Philippines
4.2.3Tamil
4.3Africa
4.4The Americas
4.4.1Native American traditions
4.4.2Colonial traditions
5Riddle-contests
5.1In real life
5.2In ancient, medieval, and folk literature
5.3In modern literature
6See also
7References
8External links
Definitions and research
Definitions
Defining riddles precisely is hard and has attracted a fair amount of scholarly debate. The first major modern attempt to define the riddle was by Robert Petsch in 1899,[4] with another seminal contribution, inspired by structuralism, by Robert A. Georges and Alan Dundes in 1963.[5] Georges and Dundes suggested that "a riddle is a traditional verbal expression which contains one or more descriptive elements, a pair of which may be in opposition; the referent of the elements is to be guessed".[5] There are many possible sub-sets of the riddle, including charades, droodles, and some jokes.
In some traditions and contexts, riddles may overlap with proverbs.[6][7][8] The Russian phrase "Nothing hurts it, but it groans all the time" can be deployed as a proverb (when its referent is a hypochondriac) or as a riddle (when its referent is a pig).[9]
Research
Much academic research on riddles has focused on collecting, cataloguing, defining, and typologising riddles. Key work on cataloguing and typologising riddles was published by Antti Aarne in 1918–20,[10] and by Archer Taylor.[11] In the case of ancient riddles recorded without solutions, considerable scholarly energy also goes into proposing and debating solutions.[12]
Whereas previously researchers had tended to take riddles out of their social performance contexts, the rise of anthropology in the post-War period encouraged more researchers to study the social role of riddles and riddling.[13] However, wide-ranging studies of riddles have tended to be limited to Western countries, with Oriental and African riddles being relatively neglected.[14]
Riddles have also attracted linguists, often studying riddles from the point of view of semiotics.[15][16]
International riddles
Tree of the year – a Faroese stamp depicting a traditional Faroese version of the year-riddle.
Many riddles appear in similar form across many countries, and often continents. Borrowing of riddles happens on a small, local scale, and across great distances. Dorvlo gives an example of a riddle that has been borrowed from the Ewe language by speakers of the neighboring Logba language: "This woman has not been to the riverside for water, but there is water in her tank". The answer is a coconut.[17] On a much wider scale, the Riddle of the Sphinx has also been documented in the Marshall Islands, possibly carried there by Western contacts in the last two centuries.[18]
Key examples of internationally widespread riddles, with a focus on European tradition, follow, based on the classic study by Antti Aarne.[19]
The Writing-riddle
The basic form of this riddle is 'White field, black seeds', where the field is a page and the seeds are letters.[20] An example is the eighth- or ninth-century Veronese Riddle:
Se pareba boves
alba pratalia araba
albo versorio teneba
negro semen seminaba
In front of him (he) led oxen
White fields (he) ploughed
A white plough (he) held
A black seed (he) sowed.
Here, the oxen are the scribe's finger(s) and thumb, and the plough is the pen. Among literary riddles, riddles on the pen and other writing equipment are particularly widespread.[21][22]
The Year-riddle
This type is found across Eurasia.[23] For example, a riddle in the Sanskrit Rig Veda describes a 'twelve-spoked wheel, upon which stand 720 sons of one birth' (i.e. the twelve months of the year, which together have 360 days and 360 nights).[24]
The Person-riddle
The most famous example of this type is the Riddle of the Sphinx. This Estonian example shows the pattern:
Homikul käib nelja,
lõuna-ajal kahe
õhtul kolme jalaga
It goes in the morning on four feet,
at lunch-time on two,
at evening on three[25]
The riddle describes a crawling baby, a standing person, and an old person with a walking stick.
Two-legs, three-legs, and four-legs
This type includes riddles along the lines of this German example:
Zweibein sass auf Dreibein und ass Einbein.
Da kam Vierbein und nahm Zweibein das Einbein.
Da nahm Zweibein Dreibein und schlug damit Vierbein,
dass Vierbein Einbein fallen liess.
Two-legs sat on Three-legs and cradled One-leg.
Then Four-legs came and took One-leg from Two-legs.
Then Two-legs took Three-legs and with it struck Four-legs,
so that Four-legs let One-leg go.[26]
The conceit here is that Two-legs is a person, Three-legs is a three-legged stool, Four-legs is a dog, and One-leg is a walking stick.
The Cow-riddle
An example of this type[27] is given here in thirteenth-century Icelandic form:
Fjórir hanga,
fjórir ganga,
tveir veg vísa,
tveir hundum varða,
einn eptir drallar
ok jafnan heldr saurugr.
Heiðrekr konungr,
hyggðu at gátu!
Four are hanging,
Four are walking,
Two point the way out,
Two ward the dogs off,
One ever dirty
Dangles behind it.
This riddle ponder
O prince Heidrek![28]
The cow has four udders, four legs, two horns, two back legs, and one tail.
The Rider-and-horse riddle
This is a French version of the type
Six pieds,
quatre oreilles,
deux bouches,
deux fronts,
quelle bête est-ce donc?
Six feet,
four ears,
two mouths,
two foreheads:
what beast, then, is it?[29]
The Featherless bird-riddle
This type is best known in Central Europe.[30] An English version is:
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
Attic red-figure pelike, Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx and frees Thebes, by the Achilleus painter, 450–440 BC, Altes Museum Berlin (13718779634)
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:
Nar naari kehlaati ha',
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
See also: Riddles (Hebrew)
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
See also: Riddles (Greek)
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
See also: Riddles (Arabic) and Riddles (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
See also: Anglo-Saxon riddles and Riddles (Scandinavian)
The Exeter Book: the principal manuscript of medieval Germanic-language riddles.
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:
Es kam ein Vogel federlos,
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
See also: Riddles (Finnic)
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:
First I was small, and round like a pearl;
Then long and slender, as brave as an earl;
Since, like an hermit, I lived in a cell,
And now, like a rogue, in the wide world I dwell.[83]
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] 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'.
The first stage of solving the riddle is verbal:
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).
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).
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 TagalogBugtong:
Bugtong-bugtong, Hindi hari, hindi pari
ang suot ay sari-sari.
Riddle-riddle, not a king, nor a priest,
but dresses for a feast.
—Sampayan
—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]
If the sun sets, a flower-garden;
but if you look at it after dawn, an empty garden. What is it?
—Vaanam
—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
See also: Riddle-tales (ancient and medieval)
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
The Riddler, from the Batman comics.
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 Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands and The Dark Tower IV: 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
^Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 3.
^Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Riddles: Perspectives on the Use, Function, and Change in a Folklore Genre, Studia Fennica, Folkloristica, 10 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2001), p. 163 doi:10.21435/sff.10.
^Elli Köngäs Maranda, "Riddles and Riddling: An Introduction", The Journal of American Folklore, 89 (1976), 127–37 (p. 131); doi:10.2307/539686; JSTOR 539686; cf. Hannah Burrows, "Wit and Wisdom: The Worldview of the Old Norse-Icelandic Riddles and their Relationship to Eddic Poetry", in Eddic, Skaldic, and Beyond: Poetic Variety in Medieval Iceland and Norway, ed. by Martin Chase (New York: Forham University Press, 2014), pp. 114–35 (p. 116).
^Petsch, Robert. "Neue Beitrëge zur Kenntnis des Volksrätsels", Palaestra, 4 (1899).
^ abGeorges, Robert A.; Dundes, Alan. "Towards a Structural Definition of the Riddle", Journal of American Folklore, 76(300) (1963), 111–18 doi:10.2307/538610, JSTOR 538610. Reprinted in Alan Dundes, Analytic Essays in Folklore (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 95–102.
^John C. Messenger, Jr. 1960. "Anang Proverb-Riddles". The Journal of American Folklore Vol. 73, No. 289: pp. 225–235. doi:10.2307/537975. JSTOR 537975.
^Finnegan, Ruth. Oral Literature in Africa. The Saylor Foundation, 1982. p. 418.
^Umoh, S. J. 2007. "The Ibibio Proverb—Riddles and Language Pedagogy". International Journal of Linguistics and Communication 11(2), 8–13.
^Alan Dundes, "On the Structure of the Proverb", in Analytic Essays in Folklore, ed. by Richard Dorson (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 103–8.
^Archer Taylor, A Bibliography of Riddles, Folklore Fellows Communications, 126 (Helsinki, 1939).
^E.g. Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exteter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011).
^E.g. David Evans, "Riddling and the Structure of Context", The Journal of American Folklore, 89 (1976), 166–88; doi:10.2307/539688; JSTOR 539688; Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Riddles: Perspectives on the Use, Function, and Change in a Folklore Genre, Studia Fennica, Folkloristica, 10 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2001), doi:10.21435/sff.10.
^A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), 14–18.
^Elli Köngäs Maranda, "Riddles and Riddling: An Introduction", The Journal of American Folklore, 89 (1976), 127–37 (pp. 135–37); doi:10.2307/539686; JSTOR 539686.
^Claudia Schittek, Die Sprach- und Erkenntnisformen der Rätsel (Stuttgart: M und P, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1991): ISBN 978-3-476-45007-4; doi:10.1007/978-3-476-04165-4.
^Dorvlo, Kofi. "Ewe borrowings into Logba." International Journal of Bilingualism 18.4 (2014): 428-446.
^p. 266. Davenport, William. 1952. Fourteen Marshallese Riddles. The Journal of American Folklore Vol. 65, No. 257, pp. 265-266.
^Antti Aarne, Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26–28 (Helsinki/Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918–20), I 35–73.
^ abLuke Powers, "Tests for True Wit: Jonathan Swift's Pen and Ink Riddles", South Central Review, 7.4 (Winter 1990), 40–52; doi:10.2307/3189093. JSTOR 3189093.
^Helen Price, Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2013), pp. 92–128.
^Antti Aarne, Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26–28 (Helsinki/Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918–20), I 74–178.
^Frederick Tupper, Jr, "Originals and Analogues of the Exeter Book Riddles", Modern Language Notes, 18.4 (April 1903), 97–106 (p. 102). JSTOR 2917102.
^Antti Aarne, Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26–28 (Helsinki/Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918–20), II 3–23 (p. 12).
^Antti Aarne, Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26–28 (Helsinki/Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918–20), II 24–59 (p. 24).
^Antti Aarne, Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26–28 (Helsinki/Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918–20), II 60–172.
^The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, trans. by Christopher Tolkien (London: Nelson, 1960), p. 43 [no. 70].
^Antti Aarne, Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26–28 (Helsinki/Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918–20), II 173–216 (p. 173).
^Antti Aarne, Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26–28 (Helsinki/Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918–20), III 3–48.
^Jón Árnason, Íslenzkar gátur, skemtanir, vikivakar og Þulur, I (Kaupmannahöfn: Hið Íslenzka bókmenntafélag, 1887), http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/IcelOnline/IcelOnline-idx?type=HTML&rgn=DIV2&byte=187436.
^Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 12–13, citing M. Jaeger, "Assyrische Räthsel und Sprichwörter", Beiträge zur Assyriologie, 2 (1894), 274–305.
^A. A. Seyeb-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), 14.
^Richard Salomon, "When is a Riddle not a Riddle? Some Comments on Riddling and Related Poetic Devices in Classical Sanskrit", in Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes, ed. by Galit Hasan-Rokem and David Shulman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 168–78 (p. 168).
^Martin Haug, "Vedische Räthselfragen und Räthselsprüche (Uebersetzung und Erklärung von Rigv. 1, 164)", Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-philologischen und historischen Classe der Köngl. bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München (1875), 457–515.
^Jan E. M. Houben, "The Ritual Pragmatics of a Vedic Hymn: The 'Riddle Hymn' and the Pravargya Ritual", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 120 (2000), 499–536 (English translation pp. 533–36), doi:10.2307/606614. JSTOR 606614.
^Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 13–17.
^See also J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens: Proeve eener bepaling van het spel-element der cultuur (Haarlem, 1940), pp. 154ff.
^Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 16–17, citing A. Führer, "Sanskrit-Räthsel", Zeitschrift der Deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 39 (1885), 99–100.
^Prakash Vatuk, Ved (1969). "Amir Khusro and Indian Riddle Tradition". The Journal of American Folklore. 82 (324): 142–54 [142]. doi:10.2307/539075. JSTOR 539075. citing Durga Bhagwat, The Riddle in Indian Life, Lore and Literature (Bombay, 1965), 5-9.
^Bronner, Yigal (2012). "A Question of Priority: Revisiting the Bhamaha-Daṇḍin Debate". The Journal of Indian Philosophy. 40 (1): 67–118 [76]. doi:10.1007/s10781-011-9128-x. JSTOR 43496624. Citing Kāvyādarśa 3.114.
^ abAnnikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Riddles: Perspectives on the Use, Function, and Change in a Folklore Genre, Studia Fennica, Folkloristica, 10 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2001), pp. 11–12; doi:10.21435/sff.10.
^Ioannis M. Konstantakos, "Trial by Riddle: The Testing of the Counsellor and the Contest of Kings in the Legend of Amasis and Bias", Classica et Mediaevalia, 55 (2004), 85–137 (pp. 111–13).
^Christine Goldberg, Turandot's Sisters: A Study of the Folktale AT 851, Garland Folklore Library, 7 (New York: Garland, 1993), p. 25.
^Annemarie Schimmel, Classical Urdu Literature from the Beginning to Iqbāl, A History of Indian Literature, 8 (Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden, 1975), p. 129.
^Prakash Vatuk, Ved (1969). "Amir Khusro and Indian Riddle Tradition". The Journal of American Folklore. 82 (324): 142–54 [144, 143]. doi:10.2307/539075. JSTOR 539075.
^ abJoseph Jacobs, "Riddle", in The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, ed. by Isidore Singer (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1901–1907), s.v.
^Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 41–42.
^Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 33–35, citing Nehemya Aluny, "Ten Dunash Ben Labrat's Riddles", The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, 36 (1945), 141–46, doi:10.2307/1452496, JSTOR 1452496.
^See further Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 35–37.
^Frederick G. Naerebout and Kim Beerden, "'Gods Cannot Tell Lies': Riddling and Ancient Greek Divination", in The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry, ed. by Jan Kwapzt, David Petrain, and Mikolaj Szymanski (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 121–47 (p. 140).
^Frederick G. Naerebout and Kim Beerden, "'Gods Cannot Tell Lies': Riddling and Ancient Greek Divination", in The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry, ed. by Jan Kwapzt, David Petrain, and Mikolaj Szymanski (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 121–47.
^Christine Luz, "What has it got in its Pocketses? Or, What Makes a Riddle a Riddle?", in The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry, ed. by Jan Kwapzt, David Petrain, and Mikolaj Szymanski (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 83–99.
^Jan Kwapisz, "Were there Hellenistic Riddle Books?", in The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry, ed. by Jan Kwapzt, David Petrain, and Mikolaj Szymanski (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 148–67 (p. 148).
^Christine Luz, "What has it got in its Pocketses? Or, What Makes a Riddle a Riddle?", in The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry, ed. by Jan Kwapzt, David Petrain, and Mikolaj Szymanski (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 83–99 (p. 84).
^"Aristotle's Rhetoric Book III, Chapter 2". Archived from the original on 2016-10-05. Retrieved 2016-07-22.
^Milovanović-Barham, Čelica (1993). "Aldhelm's Enigmata and Byzantine Riddles". Anglo-Saxon England. 22: 51–64 [pp. 53–54, esp. n. 11]. doi:10.1017/S0263675100004300.
^Rebcca R. Benefiel, "Magic Squares, Alphabet Jumbles, Riddles and More: The Culture of Word-Games among the Graffiti of Pompeii", in The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry, ed. by Jan Kwapzt, David Petrain, and Mikolaj Szymanski (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 65–79 (pp. 72–75).
^Andrew Welsh, "Riddle" in Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, ed. by Carl Lindahl, John McNamara and John Lindow, 2 vols (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000), II 824–32 (pp. 826–27).
^Doris Clark, "Tarsiana's Riddles in the LdA", in Medieval Hispanic Studies Presented to Rita Hamilton, ed. by Alan D. Deyermond (Támesis, 1976), pp. 31–43, cited by Harriet Goldberg, "Riddles and Enigmas in Medieval Castilian Literature", Romance Philology, 36(2) (1982), 209–21 (p. 216 n. 22).
^G. J. H. van Gelder, "lughz", in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, ed. by Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, 2 vols (London: Routledge, 1998), II 479.
^A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010).
^E.g. Charles T. Scott, Persian and Arabic Riddles: A Language-Centered Approach to Genre Definition (Bloomington, 1965).
^Tomas Tomasek, Das deutsche Rätsel im Mittelalter, Hermaea germanistische Forschungen, neue Folge, 69 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), pp. 158–74.
^Christopher Wells, "The Shorter German Verse Texts", in German Literature of the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Brian Murdoch, Camden House History of German Literature, 2 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), pp. 157–200 (pp. 181–82).
^Jeffrey Scott Love, The Reception of Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century, Münchner Nordistische Studien, 14 (München: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2013), p. 198.
^Tomas Tomasek, Das deutsche Rätsel im Mittelalter, Hermea: Germanistische Forschungen, Neue Folge, 69 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994).
^On German riddles, see further Mathilde Hain, Rätsel, Sammlung Metzler, 53. Realienbücher für Germanisten. Abt. E: Poetik (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1966).
^Alaric Hall, "Changing Style and Changing Meaning: Icelandic Historiography and the Medieval Redactions of Heiðreks saga", Scandinavian Studies, 77 (2005), 1–30, at pp. 9–10. JSTOR 40920553
^Burrows, Hannah, "Wit and Wisdom: The Worldview of the Old Norse-Icelandic Riddles and their Relationship to Eddic Poetry", in Eddic, Skaldic, and Beyond: Poetic Variety in Medieval Iceland and Norway, ed. by Martin Chase (New York: Forham University Press, 2014), 114–35; Hannah Burrows, "Enigma Variations: Hervarar saga's Wave-Riddles and Supernatural Women in Old Norse Poetic Tradition", JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 112 (2013), 194–216, doi:10.5406/jenglgermphil.112.2.0194, JSTOR 10.5406/jenglgermphil.112.2.0194.
^Christine Goldberg, Turandot's Sisters: A Study of the Folktale AT 851, Garland Folklore Library, 7 (New York: Garland, 1993), p. 35.
^Patrick Sims-Williams, Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 114–15.
^Christine Goldberg, Turandot's Sisters: A Study of the Folktale AT 851, Garland Folklore Library, 7 (New York: Garland, 1993), pp. 36–37.
^Patrick Sims-Williams, Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 115. Cf. Vernam Hull and Archer Taylor, A Collection of Welsh Riddles, University of California Publications in Modern Philology, 26 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1942); Vernam Hull and Archer Taylor, A Collection of Irish Riddles, University of California Publications: Folklore Studies, 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955; Thomas Parry, "'Y Gorcheston'", Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 5 (1930), 138–40.
^Frauke Rademann-Veith, Die skandinavischen Rätselbücher auf der Grundlage der deutschen Rätselbuch-Traditionen (1540–1805) (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2010) (PhD thesis, Münster University, 2004.
^Strassburger Räthselbuch: Die erste zu Strassburg ums Jahr 1505 gedruckte deutsche Räthselsammlung, ed. by A. F. Butsch (Straßburg, 1876).
^Dominik Landwehr, "Review of Simpliciana: Schriften der Grimmelshausen Gesellschaft 2014", in Cryptologia, 41(1) (2017), 92–96. doi:10.1080/01611194.2016.1236628.
^Leea Virtanen, "The Collecting and Study of Riddles in Finland", in Arvoitukset: Finnish Riddles, ed. by Leea Virtanen, Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj and Aarre Nyman, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Toimituksia, 329 ([Helsinki]: Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1977), pp. 51–57.
^ abLeea Virtanen, "On the Function of Riddles", in Arvoitukset: Finnish Riddles, ed. by Leea Virtanen, Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj and Aarre Nyman, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Toimituksia, 329 ([Helsinki]: Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1977), pp. 77–89 (at 80–82).
^Finnish Folk Poetry: Epic. An Anthology in Finnish and English, ed. and trans. by Matti Kuusi, Keith Bosley and Michael Branch, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran toimituksia, 329 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 1977), pp. 33–34.
^Taylor, Archer, English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951).
^Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley: University of California Pres, 1948), p. 2.
^Andrew Welsh, "Riddle" in Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, ed. by Carl Lindahl, John McNamara and John Lindow, 2 vols (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000), II 824-32 (p. 829).
^Živilė Gimbutas, The Riddle in the Poem (Dallas: University Press of America, 2004).
^"IX. Illusions. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1904. The Complete Works". www.bartleby.com.
^Andrew Welsh, "Riddle" in Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, ed. by Carl Lindahl, John McNamara and John Lindow, 2 vols (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000), II 824-32 (p. 830).
^Richard C. Rudolph, "Notes on the Riddle in China", California Folklore Quarterly, 1.1 (Jan. 1942), pp. 65–82 (pp. 79–81). JSTOR 1495728.
^Richard C. Rudolph, "Notes on the Riddle in China", California Folklore Quarterly, 1.1 (Jan. 1942), pp. 65–82 (p. 77). JSTOR 1495728.
^Richard C. Rudolph, "Notes on the Riddle in China", California Folklore Quarterly, 1.1 (Jan. 1942), pp. 65–82 (quoting pp. 74–75). JSTOR 1495728.
^Plaks, Andrew H., "Riddle and Enigma in Chinese Civilization", in Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes, ed. by Galit Hasan-Rokem and David Shulman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 225–36.
^Chuanqi Tan, Furu Wei, Li Dong, Weifeng Lv, and Ming Zhou, "Solving and Generating Chinese Character Riddles", Proceedings of the 2016 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, Austin, Texas, November 1–5, 2016 (Association for Computational Linguistics, 2016), pp. 846–55.
^Chinese riddles: Chinese text, full romanisation, full vocabulary and full translations, ed. and trans. by William Dolby, Chinese culture series, 21 (Edinburgh: Carreg Publishers, 2007).
^Hart, Donn V. 1964. Riddles in Philippine Folklore: An Anthropological Analysis. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
^Quick, Phil (2007). "Riddles of death: The structure of the tangke-tangke riddle game used at Pendau memorial services" (PDF). In Iwasaki, Soichi; Simpaon, Andrew; Adams, Karen; Sidwell, Paul (eds.). SEALSXII: papers from the 13th meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (2003). pp. 203–212.
^"Folklore – An Introduction". Tamil Virtual University. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
^ abShanthi (December 1993). "Tamil riddles". International Institute of Tamil Studies. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
^Dieter B. Kapp (1994). "A Collection of Jaffna Tamil Riddles from Oral Tradition". Asian Folklore Studies. Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture. 53 (1): 125–149. doi:10.2307/1178562. JSTOR 1178562. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
^ abElli Köngäs Maranda, "Riddles and Riddling: An Introduction", The Journal of American Folklore, 89 (1976), 127–37 (p. 128); doi:10.2307/539686; JSTOR 539686.
^Lyndon Harries, "The Riddle in Africa", The Journal of American Folklore, 84 (1971), 377–93; doi:10.2307/539632; JSTOR 539632.
^Hamnett, Ian, "Ambiguity, Classification and Change: the Function of Riddles", Man, 2 (1967), pp. 379–391. doi:10.2307/2798727. JSTOR 2798727
^Akíntúndé Akínyẹmí, Orature and Yorùbá Riddles (Palgrave Macmillan US, 2015), doi:10.1057/9781137502636 Print ISBN 978-1-349-69958-2
^Archer Taylor, "American Indian Riddles", The Journal of American Folklore, 57 (no. 223) (January–March, 1944), 1–15 (pp. 1–2). JSTOR 53575.
^Cf. Wolfgang Mieder, "Proverbs of the Native Americans; A Prize Competition", Western Folklore, 48.3 (July 1989), 256–60. JSTOR 1499742.
^Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Riddles: Perspectives on the Use, Function, and Change in a Folklore Genre, Studia Fennica, Folkloristica, 10 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2001), pp. 35–36; doi:10.21435/sff.10.
^Archer Taylor, "American Indian Riddles", The Journal of American Folklore, 57 (no. 223) (January–March, 1944), 1–15 (pp. 2–3). JSTOR 53575.
^J. Jetté, "Riddles of the Ten'a Indians", Anthropos, 8 (1913), 181–201, 630–51. JSTOR 41103129.
^Archer Taylor, "American Indian Riddles", The Journal of American Folklore, 57 (no. 223) (January–March, 1944), 1–15. JSTOR 53575.
^Charles T. Scott, "New Evidence of American Indian Riddles", The Journal of American Folklore, 76 (no. 301) (July–September 1963), 236–41. JSTOR 53852.
^Isbell, Billie Jean; Roncalla Fernandez, Fredy Amilcar, "The Ontogenesis of Metaphor: Riddle Games among Quechua Speakers Seen as Cognitive Discovery Procedures", Journal of Latin American Lore, 3:1 (1977), 19–49. hdl:1813/2271.
^R.Fernández Manzano y otros: El trovo de la Alpujarra. Ed. Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía, 1992, pág. 27
^Ghiano, Juan Carlos (1974). “El Contrapunto de Fierro y el Moreno”. Revista Iberoamericana, XL:87-88, (1974): 337-352.
^Lyndon Harries, "The Riddle in Africa", The Journal of American Folklore, 84 (1971), 377–93 (pp. 387–88); doi:10.2307/539632; JSTOR 539632.
^Frederick G. Naerebout and Kim Beerden, "'Gods Cannot Tell Lies': Riddling and Ancient Greek Divination", in The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry, ed. by Jan Kwapzt, David Petrain, and Mikolaj Szymanski (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 121–47 (p. 140).
^Erin Sebo, "In scirpo nodum: Symphosius' Reworking of the Riddle Form", in The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry, ed. by Jan Kwapzt, David Petrain, and Mikolaj Szymanski, Beiträge zur Altertumskunde (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 184–95 (p. 184).
^Christine Goldberg, Turandot's Sisters: A Study of the Folktale AT 851, Garland Folklore Library, 7 (New York: Garland, 1993), pp. 10–11.
^Adam Roberts, The Riddles of the Hobbit (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
External links
Wikisource has the text of the 1920 Encyclopedia Americana article Riddle.
Look up riddle in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Puzzles And Riddles – A mix of both original and classic riddles.
Funny Riddles with Answers – Collection of funny riddles online.
RiddlesDB – Riddles With Answers.
Riddles.net – A collection of riddles with answers for all ages.
Riddles at Curlie – An active listing of riddle links.
Riddle Mastery
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Folklore genres, types, and subtypes
Narrative
Animal tale
Fable
Fairytale/Märchen
Legend (Urban legend)
Oral tradition
Personal narrative
Verbal arts
Folk etymology
Joke
Rhyme (Nursery rhyme)
Proverb
Riddle
Saying
Word game
Foodways
Recipe
Religion and folk belief
Folk religion
Myth
Old wives' tale
Ritual (Legend tripping)
Folk music
Folk song
Folk instrument
Art
Folk art
Outsider art
Calendar
Holiday
Other
Ghostlore
See also
Folklore studies
Morphology (folkloristics)
Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index
Motif-Index of Folk-Literature
Authority control
GND: 4048267-4
LCCN: sh85113965
NDL: 00568061
English Journal
Faster dewetting of water from C- than from C-bonded silica particles used in reversed-phase liquid chromatography: Solving the paradox.
Gritti F, Hlushkou D, Tallarek U.
Journal of chromatography. A. 2019 Sep;1602()253-265.
For comparable surface coverage of alkyl-bonded chains (∼3 μmol/m), the dewetting of 100% aqueous mobile phases from the mesopores of octyl(C)-bonded silica particles is found 70 times faster than that from the same but octadecyl(C)-bonded silica particles. This observation was made in this wor
Unusual variants of preexcitation: from anatomy to ablation: Part I - Understanding the anatomy of the variants of ventricular preexcitation.
Anderson RH, Sánchez-Quintana D, Mori S, Lokhandwala Y, Correa FS, Wellens HJ, Sternick EB.
Journal of cardiovascular electrophysiology. 2019 Aug;().
The famous quotation of Winston Churchill, made in his radio broadcast of 1939 regarding Russia's next move, specifically "A riddle wrapped up in a mystery, inside an enigma", perfectly fits the current understanding of unusual accessory atrioventricular pathways, including the variants producing ve
Vaccines Against Shigella and Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli: A summary of the 2018 VASE Conference.
Barry E, Cassels F, Riddle M, Walker R, Wierzba T.
Vaccine. 2019 Aug;37(34)4768-4774.
PATH hosted the second Vaccines Against Shigella and Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (VASE) Conference in Mexico City in June 2018, again providing experts from around the world an opportunity to participate in a highly collaborative forum to discuss progress in the development of new enteric vacci
The Sphinx and the Bridgekeeper: Denis Villeneuve's Enemy as Double-Riddle
Rayment Andrew,Nadasdy Paul
Journal of the Ochanomizu University English Society (8), 5-20, 2019-03
… An elaborate cinematic riddle that sets a series of questions concerning its ambiguities, conflicts and paradoxes, Denis Villeneuveʼs Enemy (2013) elicits interpretation by challenging the viewer to impose order upon its disarray. …
A New Look at the Old Riddle : Novelty, Routines and the Evolution of the Bicameral Brain
Goldberg Elkhonon
認知神経科学 20(3+4), 129-138, 2018
<p>A new conceptual framework for understanding hemispheric specialization across evolution is proposed, and its multiple theoretical, clinical, and methodological implications are considered. …
(〃^-^)φ 問題は順次追加中です。 Q Answer the following riddles. Riddle-001 Who is closer to you, your mom or dad? Riddle-002 Why is an empty purse always the same? Riddle-003 What odd number ...