What is a Riddle?
A riddle is generally a question devised so as to require clever or unexpected thinking for its answer. Riddles may be considered a form of brain teaser. In general conversation, a riddle is usually presented to someone who knows that a riddle is being asked and accepts the challenge of guessing the correct response. The guesser may get one or multiple guesses. Sometimes the asker gives clues, but sometimes the guesser just does the best she or he can. There is usually one correct answer to a riddle, and it is common for the correct answer to be given, even if the guesser doesn’t think of it.
Riddles typically use one of several techniques to create the twist that makes them difficult to guess. One common technique is double meanings. If the double meaning is in the words of the riddle, then a kind of equivocation is going on: the asker intends one meaning and hopes that the guesser will understand a different meaning. An example is:
In this riddle, the asker intends for the guesser to understand that as a demonstrative pronoun and assume that spelling “Railroad crossing, watch out for cars” without any r’s – an impossible task – is the goal. The goal is really to spell the word that without any r’s: T-H-A-T.
When the double-meaning word or words are not stated by the asker, the riddle is better thought of as turning on a pun. An example is:
How do we know the cook was a terrible person?
The answer is: Because he beats the eggs and whips the cream. Here, the cook’s “cruelty” is inferred from the multiple meanings of beats and whips.
Another technique is when there’s a deliberate attempt to fix an erroneous assumption in the guesser’s mind. An example is:
A woman has 7 children. Half of them are boys. How can this be possible?
Because there is a dichotomy of boy versus girl, the guesser is likely to assume that if half of the children are boys, the other half must be girls; but with an odd number, this does not work out. By recognizing this assumption as fallacious, one can reach the correct answer: since all the children are boys, half of them are also boys, even though in any other terms 3.5 children doesn’t make much sense except as a statistic.
Some riddles have a life of their own. The riddle:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
has an entire culture created around it, with many, many answers – some related to specific famous people whose philosophy, beliefs, or take on the world is used to construct a clever answer. There are a number of websites devoted to the chicken riddle.
Another type of riddle that is quite popular and varied is the elephant riddle. There are several characteristics that are notable. One is the use of a series of riddles, with later riddles referring back to a riddle previously asked for content. Another is certain structures that are used and reused:
And a third is the repeated use of certain props: the elephant’s fabled bike and sneakers, for example.
There are several cultural forms associated with riddles: riddle songs and variations on a riddle game. The traditional “Riddle Song” that begins, “I gave my love a cherry that had no stone,” is an example of a riddle song. The contest between the hobbit Bilbo Baggins and the creature Gollum in The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien gives an example of the riddle game.
Written by Mary Elizabeth
