Puzzles/Riddles

Puzzles - Riddles

Generally, a riddle is a sort of puzzle in which one is asked a question and makes attempts to come to an answer. A riddle can be a puzzling question, a hypothetical problem to be solved, or what is often also referred to as a thought experiment. Often, posing riddles can be used for other purposes than puzzlement, like the famous hangman's riddles, as well as for argumentative or political ends, where the answer is not so much a mystery but is presented as though it were. There are many types of riddles depending on their structure, their format, and what methods of thinking they require to solve. Many riddles are tricky, in that they manipulate language or common thought processes to make the answer seem less clear, like garden path riddles. The largest category of riddles are identity riddles, in which a common object or other phenomenon is described, and the solution is to correctly identify what that common object is by naming it. This is often used in educational settings as well as children's learning rhymes.

Below are the some of the more commonly known puzzles in existence.

The Riddle of the Sphinx
Perhaps one of the most famous or perhaps the most well known riddles are The Riddle of the Sphinx. As humankind’s earliest puzzle, it is among the ten greatest of all time. This is the first known recorded puzzle in the human history that are coming out of from that very legend.

Legend has it that a similarly enormous sphinx guarded the entrance to the ancient  city  of  Thebes. According to  legend,  when  mythical Greek king Oedipus  approached  the  city  of  Thebes,  he encountered a gigantic sphinx ( a mythology beast with human face with the body of lion) guarding the entrance to the city. The menacing beast confronted the mythic king and posed the following riddle to him, warning that if he failed to answer it correctly, he would die instantly at the sphinx’s hands.

The Sphinx ask Oedipus:

Oedipus, after thinking for the moments answered,

Upon hearing the correct answer, the astonished sphinx killed itself, and Oedipus entered Thebes as the hero for ridding the city of the terrible monster that had kept it captive for so long.

The Riddle of the Sphinx is considered to be the prototype for all riddles. It is intentionally constructed to harbor a non-obvious answer:namely, that life’s three phases of infancy, adulthood,and old age are comparable, respectively, to the three phases of a day (morning, noon, and night). Its function in the Oedipus story, moreover, suggests that puzzles may have originated as tests of intelligence and thus as probes of human mentality.

The Samson’s Marriage Riddle
The another examples are from the biblical story of Samson's Marriage Riddle. At his wedding feast, Samson, obviously wanting to impress the relatives of his wife-to-be, posed the following riddle to his Philistine guests. If they could given him answer to the riddles, he will gives them thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes and vice versa will happened if they couldn't answer.

Judges 14:14

Samson contrived his riddle to describe something that he once witnessed: A swarm of bees that made honey in  a  lion’s  carcass. Hence, the  wording  of  the  riddle:  the  “eater”  =“swarm of bees”; “the strong” = the “lion”; and “came forth sweetness” =“made honey.”

The deceitful guests, however, took advantage of the seven days to coerce the answer from Samson’s wife. When they gave Samson the correct response, Judge 14:18

The mighty biblical hero became enraged, returned his newly wed wives to her family members and declared war against all Philistines which will led to his eventual downfall.

From this examples, yet again, we can see that the usage of riddles since the ancient time to test of one's intellect.

The riddle of King Solomon and Queen Sheba
In this story of The riddle of King Solomon and Queen Sheba, the biblical Queen Sheba upon hearing the wisdom of King Solomon,pay a visit to the King himself and organize riddle contests simply for the pleasure of outwitting each other.

The Queen Sheba asked King Solomon the first riddle: King Solomon answered:

Stunned by his answer, Queen Sheba asked him the second riddles: Again King Solomon answered: (In the Hebrew literature story, Lot is daughter who became pregnant by their father,Haran and bore sons).

For the third riddle, Queen Sheba brought up 2 children who are of same facial feature, same height, same attire. She asked King Solomon made a sign to his eunuchs, who brought him nuts and roasted ears of corn, which they scattered before the children. The males, who were not bashful, collected them and tied them within the hems of their garments. The girls, however, were bashful (since their bodies would be revealed if they were to tie their undergarments) and therefore tied them within their outer garments.

Therefore, King Solomon commented: "These are the males, and these are the females"

Again dumbfounded by King Solomon wisdom, for the final riddles, she bought out a group of people circumcised and uncircumcised. Again, she riddled King Solomon King Solomon immediately made a sign to the High Priest to open the Ark of the Covenant. Within moments of opening of the Ark, whose who were circumcised stood or bowed their bodies to half their height, while their countenances were filled with the radiance of the Shekhinah. The uncircumcised, however, fell on their faces.

In this story, we could see that riddles is sometimes presented as a practical problem to be solved as seen in the last two of the riddles posed by Queen Sheba.

Nursery Rhyme's: Old Mother Twitchett
In other cultures, such as in Western countries, we can find riddles in unexpected places such as children nursery rhymes. Here are one of the more popular ones: These are particular riddle disguised as nursery rhyme that sound like this:

The answer is of course needle and thread