Astle - Riddledom: 101 riddles and their stories

Other books by David Astle

Puzzled Puzzles and Words Cluetopia Puzzles and Words 2

First published in 2015

Copyright David Astle 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Email:

Web: www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

from the National Library of Australia

www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 76011 260 8

eISBN 978 1 92526 669 6

Extract from Kit Williams, Masquerade, Jonathan Cape, 1979,

reproduced by kind permission of The Viney Agency, London, UK

Text design by Nada Backovic/Bookhouse

Text illustrations from iStock

Typeset by Bookhouse, Sydney

Cover design: Nada Backovic Designs

Cover images: OJO Images Ltd/Alamy; Shutterstock and Alexkalina/Dreamstime.com

To Heather May for her might

CONTENTS

The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.

A.N. Whitehead

Have you heard the one... ?

Unlikely, not here, not with the trip were about to take. In one wild spin were bound to visit 101 riddles from around the world and across time.

Think Ireland and Siberia, an ivory maze and a Chinese ambulanceanywhere a riddle might be lurking. Well dig up tricky questions in Pompeii and Quetzaltenango, exploring the stories that lie beneath the punchlines. Shakespeare and a Japanese game show. The steppes of Mongolia and the corridors of Hogwartsour riddle race is set to start.

Or thats the plan, assuming youre game: flying to Zanzibar and Myanmar, meeting Gulliver and Galileo, bumping into Einstein and a Scottish robot. Well swing by the Vatican, the Philippines, the Sikh mutinyall in the name of riddling. Everywhere we turn, every rock we flip, a riddle will be hiding.

Well eavesdrop on coffee slaves in Brazil and hunt bear in wild Alaska. Truth being, if you think riddles are solely the stuff of schoolyards and Christmas crackers, youre about to have your head refurbished.

Even riddlethe wordis a booby-trap. Once upon a time, gold-miners relied on cast-iron riddles to separate grit from eureka. Ditto for winnowers who winnowed with steel-mesh riddles to divide the chaff from the grain. The crux is separation, arising from the German root of reiter, or sieve.

Visit any champagne estate and you might tour their riddling cellar. Again the gist is sifting, with traditional vintners rotating new bottles a few degrees each day to separate the yeast from the elixir.

But dont be fooled. None of these rituals apply to the riddles were booked to meet. Our verb is a different branch, sprouting from rdels in Old English, a word variously meaning opinion, or guesswork, or imagination. Take your pick. All three apply inside these covers.

As for drafting a working definition for riddle, thats a separate madness. Questions are close cousins, of course, minus the twist thats central to the riddle. Questions seek knowledge or car keys. They tend to be polite, or nosy. Riddles on the other hand are built to baffle, their kinky shapes concealing a pre-loaded answer.

Or thats my understanding for now. No doubt the riddles around the corner will only shake and stir that idea. Riddles do that anyway, catching you off-guard, making the guesser appear a dunce.

But enough chitchat. Lets head down these stairs. Careful, the stone is slippery and the doors a trick to open. Welcome to the worlds own riddling cellar, a room without end. Everywhere you look the vault is stacked with bottles, each blend a riddle to sample.

If youre feeling overwhelmed, youre not alone. As a full-time puzzle-maker I know my share of word games, but this cellar takes things to another level. Riddles can be daunting, to both solvers and collectors. Hence my plan, a token bid to lend our tour some shape. To keep us from drowning Ive chosen a finite rack of labels, a premium selection of myth and romance, filth and frolic, life and death, Popsicles and Wonderland.

In a spirit of bravado Ive sorted the batch into varietals, from nature to novelty, from war to worship, though folklore is seldom so obedient. Youll notice some labels will overlap with others, while just as many riddles laugh at their pigeonholes. Like this riddle, our first:

What needs to breathe yet doesnt live?

Thats how we roll in Riddledom, each chapter presenting its own curly question to see if you can snare the answer before the tipplings done.

In essence, thats our challenge now. With one vast room to roam, lets rest our hands on 101 small mysteriesthe dry wit of Greece, the sparkle of Finlandand turn each bottle like so many doorknobs, opening to the universe awaiting on the other side. We do this right and every riddle will live and breathe.

Yes, you guessed it. Wine is the answer to Riddle 1, a potion that needs to breathe before it can animate the senses. Take a sip, if you like. The Dutch courage will do you good, a dash of medicine to help prepare for our next 100. Though I should warn youthis opener is a teaser. Upcoming riddles have far greater complexity, more than a few destined to unmoor your mind.

So lets begin. Lets turn and open, sample and solve, illuminate what marvels lie behind each dark saying, to quote the Shorter Oxford. Rather than expend precious oxygen trying to define riddles, or wonder why their trickery pervades every corner of the planet, I say we go riddling.

Milk can turn without moving. Parrots speak in polysyllables. You only need two fingers to make a Venetian blind.

I learnt these facts when riddling as a kid. Every week, every car trip, every stretch of downtime, I discovered how boiled eggs are tough to beat, while icicles are eavesdroppers.

My principal text was canary in colour, a 1959 hardback from New York City published by Platt & Munck. A lifetime later, the books still with me, a template for the volume in your hands.

Over the years the canary cover softened to margarine, but nothing else has changed. The gags are just as dusty. Quaint line drawings by George L. Carlson, the books compiler, struggle to aerate the type, the riddles numbered like so many commandments down the page, from 1 to 1001. Yes, that was the title: 1001 Riddles.

Perhaps the tally rings a bell. It should, since were about to drown in 101 mind benders, or 99 from this point onward. The echos no fluke. Riddledom is my bid to square an old debt. If not for Messrs Platt & Munck, I swear my brain would never be so devious.

The obvious homage was to modernise the relic, to build a cold list of 1001 substitute riddles. But why take a trodden path? Libraries and bookstores are swamped by wacky collections, each volume jostling to be the next Platt & Munck. The universe, I figured, didnt need another chew-chew train.

Whatever tack I took, my job was simplified by the passion the boyhood book had infused. Or, quoting Riddle 2 from that same yellow bible: