Riddle

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] Hamnett analyzes African riddling from an anthropological viewpoint.^[2]

Definitions

Defining riddles precisely is hard and has attracted a fair amount of scholarly debate. One definition famous in Anglophone scholarship is that of Alan Dundes and Robert A. Georges: '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'.^[3] In some traditions and contexts, riddles may overlap with proverbs. Thus 'Nothing hurts it, but it groans all the time' can be deployed as a proverb (when its referent is a hypocrite) or as a riddle (when its referent is a pig).^[4]

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.'^[5]

Sanskrit and later Indic languages

The first book of the Rigveda contains a number of riddles, overlapping in significant part with a collection of forty-seven in the Atharvaveda; riddles also appear elsewhere in Vedic texts.^[6]

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.^[7]

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.^[8] 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).^[9]

The first riddle collection in a medieval Indic language was by Amir Khusro (1253–1325): although he mostly wrote in Persian, he wrote his riddles in the language he called Hindawi. 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'.^[10] The riddles are in Mātrika metre; one example is:

Nar naari kehlaati hai,

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 highlight here is nadi, or "river".

Old Testament and Hebrew riddles

Riddles in Hebrew are referred to as ḥidot (singular ḥidah). The only riddle in the Bible is Samson's riddle in Judges xiv.14: Samson outwitted the Philistines by posing a riddle about the lion and the beehive until they learned the answer from his Philistine bride, costing Samson 30 suits of clothes (Judges 14:5-18).^[11] However, Joseph Jacobs believes 'it would appear that some of the proverbs in which sets of three and of four objects are mentioned (e.g. xxx.15 et seq.) were originally in the form of riddles', while Ezekiel xvii.1-10 is also a riddle of sorts.^[12]

The Bible describes how the Queen of Sheba tests Solomon with riddles, but without giving any hint as to what they were (I Kings 10:1-13). On this basis, riddles were ascribed to the Queen in later scholarship: four riddles are ascribed to her in the eleventh-century Midrash Proverbs, and these plus another fourteen in the Midrash ha-Ḥefez. The early medieval Aramic Targum Sheni also contains numerous riddles.^[13]

The Aramaic Story of Ahikar contains a long section of proverbial wisdom that in some versions also contains riddles.^[14]

Sirach mentions riddles as a popular dinner pastime, and the Talmud contains several, such as this one from the end of Kinnim: 'What animal has one voice living and seven voices dead?' ('The ibis, from whose carcass seven different musical instruments are made').^[12]

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.^[15] Exponents included Moses ibn Ezra, Yehuda Alharizi, and Judah Halevi.^[12] Immanuel the Roman wrote riddles, as did Israel Onceneyra.^[16]

For example, Moses ibn Ezra asked 'What is the sister of the sun, though made for the night? The first causes her tears to fall, and when she is near dying they cut off her head'. (The answer is 'a candle'.)^[12] Judah Halevi asked:

Evincing the infinite--

the size of your palm--

what it holds is beyond you,

curious, at hand.^[17]

(The answer is 'hand-mirror'.)

There is also 'a curious riddle' at the end of the Haggadah.^[12]

Ancient Greece and Rome

The main Ancient Greek terms for riddles are ainígmata and grîphoi. The most famous Classical riddle is the Riddle of the Sphinx: Oedipus killed the Sphinx by grasping the answer to the riddle it posed (Oedipus Tyrannus, lines 380 onward). Here the riddle, far from being mere child’s play, is made to decide matters of life and death. Although Plato reports that ancient Greek children did indeed engage in riddle play (Republic 479c), he also recognized the important function that riddles can play in showing what cannot literally be said about ultimate truths (Letters, book 2, 312d). Aristotle considered riddles important enough to include discussion of their use in his Rhetoric. He describes the close relationship between riddles and metaphors: "Good riddles do, in general, provide us with satisfactory metaphors; for metaphors imply riddles, and therefore a good riddle can furnish a good metaphor".^[18] Aristotle is not known to have composed riddles, but 'among his pseudepigrapha there apparently was a collection of metaphorical, riddle-like phrases and expressions', now lost.^[19]

Athenaeus of Naucratis (fl. C. 200 AD) compiled a copious anthology of ancient Greek riddles citing some 1,250 authors under the title Epitome. A major source for riddles in Ancient Greece is Book 14 of the Greek Anthology, which contains about 50.^[20] The last of Greece's known literary non-Christian riddle-masters is the Emperor Julian.^[21]

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.^[22] There was a particular peak around the long twelfth century: Christopher of Mytilene's στίχοι διάφοροι ('Various Verses') contain riddles, while John Mauropous, Michael Psellos, Basilios Megalomites, Theodore Prodromos, Eustathios Makrembolites, and Manuel Moschopoulos were all part of this movement.^[23] In form,

Byzantine riddles differ from classical ones more in terms of metre than in terms of subject-matter. [...] The structure of the riddle is basically the same. Most often a riddle is built around a paradoxical or ironical antithesis. The subject nearly always speaks of itself in the first person (in a personified form). Its speech usually begins with an explanation of its origins, provenance, birth, etc., in terms like: 'my mother was such-and-such, my father is so-and-so', or 'without my mother's help my father has given birth to me' (a very popular formula). At the end of its speech the subject will occasionally address the reader and dare him to use his brains and find the correct answer.^[24]

Byzantine riddles also include many whose solution involves subtracting a letter from a word. Thus a riddle attributed to Basilos Megalomites says 'A tiny animal, I am not edible; my name consists of three letters only; should you take away the first of my letters, I'd be a large one, and ready for eating'. The answer is both μυς ('mouse') and υς ('hog').^[25]

Alongside folk-riddles and literary riddles, Byzantine riddles also include riddles whose form is not sophisticated, but whose content tests knowledge of the Bible. This corpus is attested from the early fifth century onwards.^[21]

The principal collection of ancient Latin riddles is a collection of 100 hexametrical riddles by Symphosius, which were influential on later medieval Latin writers: a further 63 were composed around the seventh century in Italy in a collection known now as the Berne Riddles, and Symphosius's collection inspired a number of Anglo-Saxon riddlers.^[26] 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.^[27] The perhaps eighth- or ninth-century Veronese Riddle is a key witness to the linguistic transition from Latin to Romance.

Arabic and Persian

Scott analyzes Persian and Arabic riddles in "On Defining the Problem of a Structural Unit".^[28] Several stories in One Thousand and One Nights involve riddles.

The major English-language study of medieval Persian riddles is A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010).

The medieval Germanic-speaking world

Tree of the year -- a Faroese stamp depicting a traditional Faroese riddle.

There is a corpus of nearly 100 riddles Old English poetry, drawing partly on an Anglo-Latin literary tradition whose principal exponent was Aldhelm (c. 639-709), himself inspired by the fourth- or fifth-century Latin poet Symphosius. Riddles thus have a distinguished literary ancestry, although the contemporary sort of conundrum that passes under the name of "riddle" may not make this obvious. In the Anglo-Saxon world, the wis had wisdom due to their wit – their ability to conciliate and mediate by maintaining multiple perspectives, which has degenerated into a species of comedy, but was not always a mere laughing matter. This wit was taught with a form of oral tradition called the riddle, a collection of which were bound, along with various other gnomic verses, poems and maxims in the tenth century and deposited in Exeter Cathedral in the eleventh century - the so-called Exeter Book, one of the most important surviving collections of Old English manuscripts. The riddles in this book vary in significance from ribald innuendo to theological sophistication, and include some particularly interesting insights into the thought world of the archaic Anglo-Saxon linguistic ancestors, such as the following (Riddle 47 from the Exeter Book):

Original	Formal equivalence	Translation
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. To me that seemed a fantastical event, when I found that wonder out, that a worm swallowed certain of men’s word, a thief in darkness, a glorious statement and strong its foundation. The thieving stranger was not a whit more wise that he swallowed those words.	A moth ate words. I thought that was a marvelous fate, that the worm, a thief in the dark, should eat a man's words - a brilliant statement and its foundation is strong. Not a whit the wiser was he for having fattened himself on those words.

An answer, however, is not implied by the poem, though it is in this sense unlike most of its era; the riddle is instead an elaborate pun, and philosophises on the subject of language and its virtues. The general technique of the riddle form is to refer obliquely 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 empirical purpose of puzzling the poet's audience and teaching the lore needed to successfully use or understand the poetic language. But riddles also served a more abstract role in Anglo-Saxon education, for they taught their listeners how to track two (or more) meanings at once in a single semantic situation, and a fortiori their very existence demonstrates that the Christian Anglo-Saxons were not inhabiting a thought-world lacking in subtlety and complexity. There are at least eighteen distinct Anglo-Saxon words describing aspects of cognitive skill [frod, ferð, onhæle, degol, cunnan, dyrne, hyge, hygecraft, hylest, heort, þencan, gleaw, sceolon, giedd, mod, sawol, heofodgimme, wis, snot(t)or, wat, swican - the list could be extended], a fact which attests to a culture valuing cognitive skills, albeit in an oral and not literate context.

Old Norse literature, though closely connected with Anglo-Saxon literature, attests to few riddles: almost all occur in one section of Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks.^[29] However, Norse mythology attests to a number of wisdom-contests, usually involving the god Odin.

Riddles survive only fragmentarily in Old High German; about 150 survive in Middle High German, mostly quoted in other literary contexts.^[30]

Early-modern to nineteenth-century riddles

With the advent of print, 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 infuence, in Scandinavia.^[31] Major collections from this period include the French Adevineaux amoureux (printed in Bruges by Colard Mansion around 1479); Demandes joyeuses en maniere de quolibets, the basis for Wynkyn de Worde's 1511 Demaundes Joyous;^[32] and 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.^[33]

Riddles are 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).^[34]

Charades

The term charade was borrowed into English from French in the second half of the eighteenth century, denoting a 'kind of riddle in which each syllable of a word, or a complete word or phrase, is enigmatically described or dramatically represented'. The term gradually became more popularly used to refer to acted charades, examples of which are described in William Thackeray's Vanity Fair and in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.^[35]

Written forms 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. One charade composed by Jane Austen goes as follows:

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!^[36]

The answer is "hem-lock".

Later examples omitted direct references to individual syllables, such as the following, said to be a favorite of Theodore Roosevelt:

I talk, but I do not speak my mind

I hear words, but I do not listen to thoughts

When I wake, all see me

When I sleep, all hear me

Many heads are on my shoulders

Many hands are at my feet

The strongest steel cannot break my visage

But the softest whisper can destroy me

The quietest whimper can be heard.

The answer is "an actor".

Contemporary riddles

Britain and America

The seminal collection of contemporary Anglophone riddles is Archer Taylor's.^[37]

Contemporary riddles typically use puns and double entendres for humorous effect, 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.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Anthropological research in Africa has produced extensive collections of riddles over the last century or so.^[38] Riddles have been characterised as 'one of the most important forms of oral art in Africa'.^[39]

In the Philippines

Quite similar to its English counterpart, the riddle in the Philippines is called Bugtong. 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:

Tagalog tl Bugtong-bugtong, Hindi hari, hindi pari ang suot ay sari-sari. -Sampayan

English en Riddle-riddle, not a king, nor a priest, but dresses for a feast. -Clothes line

Similarly, a bit south, in Sulawesi, Indonesia, among the Pendau, riddles are also used at funeral gatherings.^[40]

In Tamil language

In Tamil language, riddles are called Vidukathai. They circulate in both folk and literary forms.^[41]

Riddles are of type^[42]

• 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.^[42] A sample riddle is given below.^[43]

Tamil ta Polutu ponaal poontottam; vitintu parttal, veruntottam. atu enna? -Vaanam

English en If the sun sets, a flower-garden; but if you look at it after dawn, an empty garden. What is it? -The sky

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.^[44] 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 ancient and medieval literature

In older texts, riddle-contests frequently provide the frame stories whereby riddles have been preserved for posterity.

Riddles are prominent in many versions of the originally late-Antique Greek novel Apollonius of Tyre.^[45]

Ferdowsi's late tenth-century Persian epic, the Shahnameh, features a riddle-contest between Zal and Manuchehr, the emperor of Iran. 'The emperor was frightened and planned to get Zal out of the way. After his counselors advised him that Zal would become an unparalleled hero with a boundless love for Iran, the emperor accepted Zal and tested him with riddles. The themes are cosmological.'^[46]

The story of Turandot in One Thousand and One Nights, which was the inspiration for several modern plays, involves a riddle-contest:^[45] the suitors need to answer all three questions to gain the Princess's hand, or else they are beheaded; in Puccini's opera, Turandot grimly warns Calaf 'the riddles are three, but Death is one'.

We owe almost all our surviving riddles in Old Norse to a section in the c. thirteenth-century Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, where the god Óðinn challenges King Heiðrekr to answer his riddles.^[47] This was influential on later literature: disguised, the god plays one such game in Richard Wagner's Siegfried.

In post-medieval practice

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.^[38]

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.

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 off of 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.

Research

Much academic research on riddles has focused on collecting, cataloguing, defining and typologising riddles, with much of the key recent work done in the 1960s and 1970s. Key work on cataloguing and typologising riddles was published by Antti Aarne in 1918-20,^[48] and by Archer Taylor.^[49] The first major modern attempt to define the riddle was by Robert Petsch in 1899,^[50] with another seminal contribution, inspired by structuralism, by Robert A. Georges and Alan Dundes in 1963.^[51] Riddles have also attracted linguists, often studying riddles from the point of view of semiotics.^[52] 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.^[53] In the case of ancient riddles recorded without solutions, considerable scholarly energy also goes into proposing and debating solutions.^[54]

See also

• Missing dollar riddle
• Newspaper riddle
• Oedipus and the Sphinx
• Rumpelstiltskin
• Riddles (Arabic)
• Riddle joke
• Charades
• Neck riddle

References

1. English Riddles from Oral Tradition
2. "Ambiguity Classification and Change: the Function of Riddles", Man, 2( 1967), pp. 379–391.
3. 'Towards a Structural Definition of the Riddle', Journal of American Folklore, 76 (1963), 111-18 (rprt. in Alan Dundes, Analytic Essays in Folklore (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 95-102.
4. Alan Dundes, 'On the Structure of the Proverb', in Analytic Essays in Folklore, ed. by Richard Dorson (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 103-8.
5. 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.
6. Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 13-17, citing [Martin] Haug, 'Vedische Räthselfragen und Räthselsprüche', Sitzungsberichte d. k. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, philosophisch-philologische Classe, II.3 (Munich 1875).
7. 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.
8. Ved Prakash Vatuk, 'Amir Khusro and Indian Riddle Tradition', The Journal of American Folklore, 82 (1969), 142-54 (p. 142); DOI: 10.2307/539075; http://www.jstor.org/stable/539075, citing Durga Bhagwat, The Riddle in Indian Life, Lore and Literature (Bombay, 1965), 5-9..
9. Yigal Bronner, 'A Question of Priority: Revisiting the Bhamaha-Daṇḍin Debate', The Journal of Indian Philosophy, 40 (2012), 67–118 (p. 76). DOI 10.1007/s10781-011-9128-x. Citing Kāvyādarśa 3.114.
10. Ved Prakash Vatuk, 'Amir Khusro and Indian Riddle Tradition', The Journal of American Folklore, 82 (1969), 142-54 (pp. 144, 143); DOI: 10.2307/539075; http://www.jstor.org/stable/539075.
11. Margalith, Othniel, "Samson's Riddle and Samson's Magic Locks", Vetus Testamentum 36 (1986), pp. 225-234 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/1518382) (p. 226).
12. Joseph 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.
13. Jacob Lassner, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 9-17
14. Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 41-42.
15. 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, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1452496.
16. See further Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 35-37.
17. The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950–1492, ed. and trans. by Peter Cole (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 150.
18. 1405b4-6; cf. 1458a.
19. Čelica Milovanović-Barham, 'Aldhelm's Enigmata and Byzantine Riddles', Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (1993), 51-64 (p. 53), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100004300.
20. Čelica Milovanović-Barham, 'Aldhelm's Enigmata and Byzantine Riddles', Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (1993), 51-64 (p. 53 n. 10), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100004300. Six are available in English translation in Palatine Anthology, trans. by W. R. Paton, Loeb Library, 5 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1916-18).
21. Čelica Milovanović-Barham, 'Aldhelm's Enigmata and Byzantine Riddles', Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (1993), 51-64 (p. 54), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100004300.
22. Čelica Milovanović-Barham, 'Aldhelm's Enigmata and Byzantine Riddles', Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (1993), 51-64 (pp. 53-54, esp. n. 11), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100004300.
23. Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 42-52. The main edition, covering 214 of about 300 known riddles, is Byzantina aenigmata: Vizantijske zagonetke, ed. and trans. [into Serbian] by C. Milovanovic (Belgrade, 1986).
24. Čelica Milovanović-Barham, 'Aldhelm's Enigmata and Byzantine Riddles', Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (1993), 51-64 (p. 55), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100004300.
25. Čelica Milovanović-Barham, 'Aldhelm's Enigmata and Byzantine Riddles', Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (1993), 51-64 (p. 57), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100004300.
26. 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).
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 (1982), 209-21 (p. 216 n. 22).
28. Genre, 2 (1969), 129–42.
29. 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.
30. 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.
31. 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.
32. 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).
33. Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley: University of California Pres, 1948), p. 2.
34. 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).
35. "charade, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2015. Web. 1 September 2015.
36. 'Charades &c Written a Hundred Years Ago by Jane Austen and her family.' Spottiswoode & Co., [1895]
37. English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951).
38. Elli Köngäs Maranda, 'Riddles and Riddling: An Introduction', The Journal of American Folklore, 89 (1976), 127-37 (p. 128); DOI: 10.2307/539686; http://www.jstor.org/stable/539686.
39. Lyndon Harries, 'The Riddle in Africa', The Journal of American Folklore, 84 (1971), 377-93; DOI: 10.2307/539632; http://www.jstor.org/stable/539632.
41. "Folklore - An Introduction". Tamil Virtual University. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
42. Shanthi (December 1993). "Tamil riddles". International Institute of Tamil Studies. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
43. Dieter B. Kapp (1994). "A Collection of Jaffna Tamil Riddles from Oral Tradition". Asian Folklore Studies. Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
44. Lyndon Harries, 'The Riddle in Africa', The Journal of American Folklore, 84 (1971), 377-93 (pp. 387-88); DOI: 10.2307/539632; http://www.jstor.org/stable/539632.
45. Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), p. 41.
46. Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 25-30.
47. 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), pp. 190-238.
48. Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26-28 (Helsinki, 1918, 1919; Hamina, 1920).
49. A Bibliography of Riddles, Folklore Fellows Communications, 126 (Helsinki, 1939).
50. 'Neue Beitrëge zur Kenntnis des Volksrätsels', Palaestra, 4 (1899).
51. 'Toward a Structural Definition of the Riddle', The Journal of American Folklore, 76 (1963), 111-18; DOI: 10.2307/538610; http://www.jstor.org/stable/538610.
52. Elli Köngäs Maranda, 'Riddles and Riddling: An Introduction', The Journal of American Folklore, 89 (1976), 127-37 (pp. 135-37); DOI: 10.2307/539686; http://www.jstor.org/stable/539686.
53. E.g. David Evans, 'Riddling and the Structure of Context', The Journal of American Folklore, 89 (1976), 166-88; DOI: 10.2307/539688; http://www.jstor.org/stable/539688.
54. E.g. Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exteter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011).

External links

• Puzzles And Riddles – A mix of both original and classic riddles.
• Riddles at DMOZ – An active listing of riddle links.
• Big collection of riddles
• Isbell, Billy Jean. "Riddle Games among Quechua Speakers." Journal of Latin American Lore 3:1 (1977), 19-49. (pdf)