CHAPTER 1

The Introductory

What is it thatwalks with four legs in the morning,with two legs at midday, and with three legswhen the sun has gone down?

Should you be wily enough to answer this curious question correctly, as Oedipusdid when he was challenged by a strange creature on the road to ancient Thebes,you too will have solved one of the most confounding problems ever to face awayward traveler. Dispatched by the gods to prevent travelers from reaching thecity, the fabulous beast had perched herself on a cliff outside the city, andseized all who tried to pass by. Those who couldn't think quickly—orimaginatively—enough she hurled to their deaths, or devoured.

But Oedipus outwitted her.

"It is a human being," he answered calmly, "who crawls on all fours as a baby,walks upright on two legs in middle age, and in old age stumbles along with acane."

The writers of old said the creature was so shamed by Oedipus' clever deductionthat she hurled herself off the precipice. Who was this menacing creature, andwhat about her has haunted the world's imagination ever since? And what does herdramatic confrontation say about the enigmatic powers of the human imagination?

I am older than the pyramids.

I am the daughter of Titans.

I have the body of a lion, the wings of a bird, and the head and breasts of awoman.

I am more obscure than oracles, and more puzzling than gods.

I ask travelers questions that their lives depend on.

O wise one, weigh your words well and say what I am.

If you answered, the Sphinx, you have identified a character who has tantalizedcommentators for centuries, and you have begun to crack the mystery of theimagination. Many people have regarded the Sphinx's treatment of unfortunatewayfarers as merely the vengeance of the gods. But there is more than one way toread myths, which are sacred precisely because they reflect inexhaustiblemysteries. Myth's power to stir the soul depends on each generation breathingnew life into them, as the Egyptians did with the story of the Sphinx, which wasalready ancient when they immortalized her in stone along the banks of the Nile.

Forty centuries later, the monument still stares out at us over the desertsands, and her name is remembered for her challenges to travelers and for hertime-devouring gaze that questions everything from here to eternity.

THE MOTHER WIT

I am as enchanting as a medieval spell,charming as a nursery rhyme, as challenging as a duel.I accompany you from cradle to grave,providing laughter for childhood,literary games for middle age,and wisdom tests for elders.

Guess my gnomic name, if you can.

Walk around these words I have cobbled together as you would walk around thesands that surround the Sphinx. Take a leap of imagination. Tease the answer outof its hiding place. Turn these words around like a whetstone in your mind, thenturn to these, "When first I appear I seem mysterious, but when I am explained Iam nothing serious." Sharpen your wit on these old English words; hone yoursense of humor on them, and soon the playful subject of this book will berevealed to you as the noble riddle.

Described variously as enigmas, conundrums, puzzle poems, bafflers, charades,logogriphs, teasers, verbal jigsaws, queer words, and quiz questions, sinceolden times riddles have been posed to test people's wit and stretch theirimaginations. Riddles reveal the prodigious imagination of our ancestors andthroughout history have given a voice to those who were not commonly heard.

According to Webster's, a riddle is "a proposition put in obscure or ambiguousterms to puzzle or exercise the ingenuity in discovering its meaning; somethingto be solved by conjecture." The Dutch folklorist Jan Van Hunyard has written,"Folk riddles are traditional questions with unexpected answers, verbal puzzlesthat circulate, mostly by word of mouth, to demonstrate the cleverness of thequestioner and challenge the wit of his audience." For French anthropologistClaude Lévi-Strauss, a riddle was "an overt question with a covert answer." Myown favorite description is given by an old African American storyteller fromthe South, who drawled, "A riddle is what you guess up on."

In the spirit of conciseness, we can hazard a guess, so to speak, that riddlesare simply ingenious questions in search of clever answers:

Guess a riddle now you must:Stone is fire, and fire is dust,Black is red, and red is white—Come and view the wondrous sight.

In other words, the genius of the Sphinx is in the way her question allows us tosee the "lie that tells the truth," as Picasso once described the beauty of art,and as the traditional riddle from England just quoted tells us about coal.Consider also this old Turkish riddle: "It enters the forest and does notrustle" and its unexpected answer, the shadow. And this Spanish one: "A lazy oldwoman has a tooth in her crown, and with that tooth she gathers the people,"with its clanging answer, a bell.

At first glance or hearing, a riddle may seem to be incomprehensible, butperhaps a more fruitful descriptor would be enigmatic (literally "a darksaying"); the solving of a riddle can bring light to the imagination. Part ofthe genius of riddles is the way they illustrate the perennial wisdom thatthings aren't always what they seem, and the manner in which they reveal the"genius," the vital life, in everything.

For at least six thousand years, the riddle was held in high esteem. But inmodern times, it has unfortunately been relegated to the playgrounds of childrenand delegated to the research projects of folklorists. Unless disguised in theform of a detective story or mathematical mind-cruncher, for most modern adultsriddles are, frankly, exasperating. The most honor the word riddle receivestoday is when it is used to express a respectably mysterious problem: "The OlmecRiddle," or "The Riddle of Time." However, a closer look reveals that riddles—trueriddles—rank alongside myths, legends, fairy tales, maxims, and proverbs,as one of the earliest types of folk wisdom. From Borneo longhouses to Comanchetepees, from Anglo-Saxon mead halls to the huts of Laplander nomads, riddleshave flourished as a way to pass the time—or question it. An even deeper lookreveals that riddles were a favorite form of wordplay and brain teaser for manyof the greatest minds in history, from Aristotle to Emily Dickinson, Leonardo daVinci to James Joyce.

The source of riddles' charm remains similar from culture to culture, era toera. It begins at the beginning, with lullabies: "Twinkle, twinkle little star /How I wonder what you are...." My grandfather, Sydney England, my mother has longbeen fond of telling me, used to lull her to sleep each evening with a differentset of riddles, ending with these lilting words: "Riddle, riddle, where are you?Riddle, riddle, I love you...."

Riddles thrive not only on wonder, but on sheer surprise. Imagine this one, ifyou will: "This girl, who has six legs and two arms, often prepares to go on ajourney. She starts out with a bang, but still rocks ever pitching [like a ship]in the same place."

Our lives are literally riddled from the cradle (the answer to the Icelandicriddle quoted earlier), to the grave (the answer to this African one): "My househas no lamp." No wonder riddles have been called "the mother wit." They givebirth to the child called "poetry," and the grandchild named "joy."

TO PROVE WITH HARD QUESTIONS

He happened to be the only child,But his father and mother are not known.

In this example from the Philippines, the riddle is the only child of unknownparents. She is a linguistic orphan, but her heritage can be discovered in theroots of her name. Riddle derives from the Old English word raedal, meaning "togive advice," and also shares the same root as the verb to read. Its secondarymeaning, "a coarse-meshed sieve," has its origins in the Old English hriddel,"to sift," but is not unconnected. Uncannily, the riddle allows us to siftthrough false meanings looking for true ones. We also speak of being "riddledwith doubt," suggesting we have "holes" in our convictions. In other words, wedon't have all the answers.

In the proverbial nutshell, traditional folk riddles are quizzical questionswith anonymous authors. The footprints of the oldest ones, such as the enigma ofthe Sphinx, have disappeared underneath the tides of time. We only know thatthey have been passed down for generations by word of mouth from the peasantsand sages of every culture. Brahmen priests propounded riddles in the sacredpages of the Rig Veda, Mohammed posed them in the Koran. In the Old Testament,Josephus tells of the King of Tyre, Hiram, and wise Solomon, waging a riddlecontest. In Kings I, when the Queen of Sheba "heard of the fame of Solomon ... shecame to prove him with hard questions." In other words, to test his legendarywisdom. The Hebrew warrior Samson is chronicled in Judges 14 as staging a riddleparty for the thirty Philistine guests, and posing this inscrutable riddle: "Outof eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." Thehero's opponents tricked the answer out of his bride: He ate honey out of ahoneycomb in the carcass of a lion he had recently killed. The folkloristCharles Potter describes this challenge as a riddle strife, "one of thoseexciting tournaments of wit held in ancient times when men might bet theirfortunes, wives, daughters, and even their lives on their cleverness in riddleguessing."

Eventually riddles were transcribed into many cultures' sacred texts, then intocompilations for popular entertainment. The oldest collection is found ineighth-century Anglo-Saxon poetry. The Exeter Book, which contains ninety-fiveriddles, with poetry that still casts a spell, on subjects such as snow andswords. Later collections include a book of riddles called Amusing Questions,published in 1511 by a printer named Wynkyn de Worde. But listen closely: If hisname is pronounced quickly—"winking of word"—you can hear a mellifluous metaphorfor the riddle! Is the author telling us under an assumed name that riddles area "winking of words"? Other collections include books with equally melodioustitles such as Gnomologia and Aenigmata, which were among the first printedbooks. Riddles appear in the The Arabian Nights Entertainments, The GrimmBrothers Fairy Tales, The Mother Goose Rhymes, and in J. R. R. Tolkien's TheLord of the Rings. Robert Graves described in The White Goddess how arcanereligious secrets in ancient Britain were hidden in challenging riddles. Riddlesappear in rituals, such as Druid initiations, African birth ceremonies, Filipinoharvest festivals, and the Hawaiian hoopaapaa riddling contests designed todiscover the worthiest of the chief's sons.

The riddlic tradition continued throughout the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vincipracticed drawing rebuses (pictorial riddles) and a series of "riddle songs,"which were wordplays on the sounds of the names of musical notes. Shakespearehimself was fond of riddles. In A Midsummer's Night's Dream, Lysander "riddlesvery prettily," and Berowne describes love as "subtle as a riddle." Goethe,Swift, Cervantes, Coleridge, Austen, and Blake all practiced the perplexing art.The composers Puccini, Elgar, and Grieg wrote opera plots that hinged onriddles. In her poetry and letters, Emily Dickinson often used riddles todescribe matters too subtle or forbidden during her time to be written any otherway. Literary critics have described James Joyce's labyrinthine novel, FinnegansWake, as one enormous riddle. The metaphor makes an appearance on the basketballcourt when Zen master-basketball coach Phil Jackson writes in Sacred Hoops, that"each game is a riddle that must be solved, and there are no textbook answers."

THE WHETSTONE OF WORDS

What goes round and round and round,but never gets anywhere?

"It is an excellent practice to rede riddles," reads an eleventh century Anglo-Saxontext. Illustrative of this belief is a nineteenth- century collection ofriddles that was published under the title, "A Whetstone for Dull Wits,"suggesting that riddles may sharpen our wits, as the above riddle for whetstonedemonstrates.

To many cultures, the ritual of romantic courting entailed serious riddlingcontests. In 1783, Christfrid Ganander wrote of the tradition of the Old Goths,"Our ancestors in this kingdom tested with riddles the acuity, intelligence andskills of each other.... Also when a suitor or a young man came to ask for a girl,three or more riddles were posed to him, to test his mind with them, and if hecould answer and interpret them, he received the girl, otherwise not, but wasclassified as stupid and good for nothing.... Lastly, one takes note that theyoung folks, boys and girls, test each other still at present with riddles inour province; it is shameful if the other cannot answer three riddles, and theythen send [her] to the yard of shame...."

Until the nineteenth century, old men in Brittany were still ritualisticallyasking each other riddles in the cemetery after funeral banquets. "Riddling pastthe graveyard," you might say. As one commentator has written, during wakes inthe Aru archipelago, while the corpse is being "uncoffined" or shown formourning purposes, the deceased's survivors "propound riddles to each other."For tribes such as the Igorots of northern Luzon in the Philippines, theriddling that takes place during wakes is prearranged by the hosts, who partakein riddling, poetry, and cards "to get away from the drowsiness or sleepinesslikely to overcome guests" and "kill the monotony of a night."

According to Charles Potter, cracking tough riddles at a ritual gathering mayinvolve sympathetic magic thinking. For example, a wedding riddle may encouragea young couple to think they might similarly tackle and find the solution formany of the vexed problems of married life. "At any rate," writes Potter, "itwould start them off in the atmosphere of accomplishment and the aura ofsuccess. For the hidden belief is that solving a riddle may help answer anenigma in one's life." True folk riddles possess quicksilver flashes of anancient way of observing the world, and remind us of why riddles have long been"used by kings, judges, oracles, and others to test a person's wisdom orworthiness."

Potter recollects the childhood riddling sessions with his parents, which were,"mind-stretching, for the answer to each new riddle was not given to me until Ihad tried long and hard and turned the given situation every which way seekingthe solution." Often, families cracked nuts while they tried to figure out theriddles, hence the origin of the term "cracking riddles." Catharine Ann McCollumwrites in "Winter Evenings in Iowa" that pioneer families used to pose riddlesto one another while carpet rags were being sewn and mended, and while thefamily did other work.

So much a part of life were riddles, according to Potter, that through the turnof the century most young children in the American South would have giggled atthe obviousness of the following riddle:

I have an apple I can't cut,A blanket I can't fold,And so much money I can't count it.

The children would have been able to accomplish wonderful associative leaps tofigure out the answer—Sun, sky, and stars (round apple, round sun; the blanketedsky; the richness of a sky full of stars)—because riddles had been passed downfor generations, and it was customary to look and observe the ordinary world forcorrespondences and analogies, the "genius" of riddles.

Little Nancy Etticoat, in a white petticoat, and a red nose.

The longer she stands, the shorter she grows.

This traditional puzzler about a glowing candle demonstrates more than anytheory how riddling combines beauty, mystery, and logic. Archer Taylor, thebrilliant folklorist and world authority on riddles, believed that descriptiveriddles such as this traditional English one, "describe objects in intentionallymisleading terms—we can call it metaphor or group-language, if we like—and dealwith externalities of the object. Humpty Dumpty tells of a man who rolls, falls,and is injured beyond being put together again. Little Nancy Etticoat describesa candle as a girl who becomes shorter the longer she lives. These descriptionsare true enough but have nothing to do with the uses of an egg or candle. Achild of ten or eleven years sees objects in this way and enjoys and remembersthem. An adult no longer sees them in this way and no longer remembers riddles."

THE GUESSERY

What is that which has never been felt,

Never been seen, never been heard,

Never existed,

And still has a name?