Riddle Answers
Lance
1) What is it that has four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three at
twilight?
Answer 1:
Oedipus answered: "Man who crawls on four limbs as a baby, walks upright on
two as an adult, and gets around with the aid of a stick in old age."
The fishermen's' riddle was:
2) What we caught, we threw away. What we could not catch, we kept.
Answer 2:
Fleas
Samson tried to impress his wife's Philistine relatives by posing the
riddle:
3)Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth
sweetness.
Answer 3:
Samson had witnessed a swarm of bees making honey in the carcass of a lion.
A typical riddle by Symphosious is:
4) Unlike my mother, in semblance different from my father, of mingled race,
a breed unfit for progeny, of others am I born, and none is born of me.
Answer 4:
The Mule
as with this one by Metrodorus (who published a collection circa 500 AD):
5)If you put one hundred in the middle of a burning fire, you wll find the
son and a slayer of a virgin.
Answer 5:
Put the Greek symbol for 100 [rho into the word pyros [fire] - which will
produce the name Pyrrhos, who was the son of Deidamia and the slayer of
Polyxena.
Aldheim (640-709) example:
6)Long since the holy power that made all things
So made me that my master's dangerous foes
I scatter. Bearing weapons in my jaws,
I soon decide fierce combats; yet I flee
Before the lashings of a little child.
Answer 6:
The dog
Alcuin's riddle:
7) A beast has sudden come to this my house,
A beast of wonder, who two heads has got,
And yet the beast has only one jaw-one.
Twice three ten of horrid teeth it has.
Its food grows on this body of mine,
Not flesh, nor fruit. It eats not with its teeth,
Drinks not. Its open mouth shows no decay.
Tell me, Damoeta dear, what beast is this?
Answer 7:
A comb
Benedictine monk Claret's riddle:
8) A vessel have I
That is round like a pear,
Moist in the middle,
Surrounded with hair;
And often it happens
That water flows there.
Answer 8:
An eye, though the reader is meant to think of something else
English "Merry Book of Riddles" (1575) contains:
9)He went to the wood and caught it,
He sate him downe and sought it;
Because he could not find it,
Home with him he brought it.
Answer 9:
A thorn in the foot
Voltaire (1694 - 1778) composed many clever riddles, such as the following:
10) What of all things in the world is the longest, the shortest, the
swiftest, the slowest, the most divisible and most extended, most regretted,
most neglected, without which nothing can be done, and with which many do
nothing, which destroys all that is little and ennobles all that is great?
Answer 10:
Time
Charade example:
11) My first is to ramble;
My next is to retreat;
My whole oft enrages
In summer's fierce heat.
Who am I?
Answer 11:
A gadfly
Conundrum example:
12) What is black and white and red all over?
Answer 12:
A newspaper
George Canning (1770-1827) example:
13) A word there is of plural number,
Foe to ease and tranquil slumber;
Any other word you take
And add an "s" will plural make,
But if you add an "s" to this,
So strange the metamorphosis;
Plural is plural now no more,
And sweet what bitter was before.
Answer 13:
Cares - caress
Another example, by Horace Walpole, is truly ingenious:
14) Before my birth I had a name,
But soon as born I chang'd the same;
And when I am laid within the tomb,
I shall my father's name assume.
I change my name three days together
Yet live but one in any weather.
Answer 14:
Today
Almost always riddles cannot be correctly answered literally. So
15) What is the difference between a hill and a pill?
Answer 15:
One is hard to get up, the other is hard to get down
Peter H.M. Brooks
"Lance" <Lan...@Worldonline.co.za> wrote in message
news:cdmdm4$oan$1...@ctb-nnrp2.saix.net...
> The Spinx's riddle:
>
Thank you for posting the answers.
>
> 5)If you put one hundred in the middle of a burning fire, you wll find the
> son and a slayer of a virgin.
>
> Answer 5:
> Put the Greek symbol for 100 [rho into the word pyros [fire] - which will
> produce the name Pyrrhos, who was the son of Deidamia and the slayer of
> Polyxena.
>
thinking about that one, I'd never have got it!
>
> Benedictine monk Claret's riddle:
>
> 8) A vessel have I
> That is round like a pear,
> Moist in the middle,
> Surrounded with hair;
> And often it happens
> That water flows there.
>
> Answer 8:
> An eye, though the reader is meant to think of something else
>
'sometimes' then an eye would spring more readily to mind, unless monks then
had rheumier eyes than now.
> >
> Charade example:
>
> 11) My first is to ramble;
> My next is to retreat;
> My whole oft enrages
> In summer's fierce heat.
> Who am I?
>
loved charades as children, but I haven't played them for about a decade -
maybe I should introduce them at my next dinner party.
--
The great majority of investors aren't stupid, their error is to believe
that those 'in the know' in finance have more information than they do,
which is true, but that this makes them savvier, which is a joke. - Bedlam
July newsletter
kames.smiths
<snip answers to riddles>
Thanks for that. The solutions are sometimes a bit imprecise for my
taste, but perhaps I'm rather pedantic (eg rho into pyros produces
pyrrhoos). Now a riddle for you. What's the difference between a nun
and a teenage girl having a bath? (Clue: a nun is a soul full of
hope.)
Dave Smith
Lance
"kames.smiths" <kames....@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Thanks for that. The solutions are sometimes a bit imprecise for my
> taste, but perhaps I'm rather pedantic (eg rho into pyros produces
> pyrrhoos). Now a riddle for you. What's the difference between a nun
> and a teenage girl having a bath? (Clue: a nun is a soul full of
> hope.)
>
> Dave Smith
Dave
I think you'll have to tell me.
Lance
>
>
kames.smiths
Really? Think of a spoonerism for 'soul full of hope'. Rather an
unpleasant (and unoriginal) joke, of which I am a little ashamed. From
the sacred to the profane in but a few words!
Dave Smith
Lance
I think I parsed your original riddle incorrectly. I took the having a
bath part to apply to both the nun and the teenage girl. Obviously I
should have compared the nun l sans activity with the teenage girl
bathing.
Lance
kames.smiths
"Lance" <lache...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote in message
news:35c8b586.04072...@posting.google.com...
Sorry, I should have placed a comma after 'nun'. I suppose a nun might
still be a soul full of hope when she is bathing, however. You just
aren't as vulgar as I am.
Dave Smith.
Peter H.M. Brooks
> still be a soul full of hope when she is bathing, however. You just
> aren't as vulgar as I am.
>
the jokes you assume that we've all heard at school. It is by no means even
in the category of 'most vulgar'!
--
"My dear Mr. Greech," said Lady Caroline, "we all know that Prime Ministers
are wedded to the truth, but like other wedded couples they sometimes live
apart." - Saki, The Unbearable Bassington