Category Archives: Riddle

Escape the Box Riddle

Context: The respondent learned this riddle as it was passed from friend to friend in elementary school.

M.A. : I have a riddle? Do I just tell you the riddle?
P.Z. : Yeah, tell me a riddle.
M.A. : Okay, so you’re stuck in a metal box, yeah?
P.Z. : Okay.
M.A. : And there’s no exits, um, and no way out. In the box, you have a table and a mirror. So how do you get out?
P.Z. : Alright, so I have heard this one —
M.A. : Oh, God
P.Z. : So I’m not gonna guess, but I want you to say it.
M.A. : Okay, so to get out, you look into the mirror, and you saw yourself. Okay? And so you take the saw from the mirror, and cut the table in half. And then who halves make a whole, and then you climb out the hole. That is the amazing riddle, thank you.
P.Z. : Bravo. So where did you hear that one?
M.A. : Okay, so I heard it from my brother, who heard it from, I have no idea. I’m assuming probably like school, or friends —
P.Z. : Was this like middle school, high school, elementary school?
M.A. : Um, I was definitely in elementary school when he told me this.
P.Z. : Okay, so that’s also, I heard it from my school around the same time, so —
M.A. : Yeah, I know I was young.

Thoughts: Like the respondent, I had also heard this riddle from a friend in elementary school. It did have slightly different wording, but that is seemingly inconsequential as the crux of the riddle remains the same. Riddles seemed extremely popular as some of my teachers would encourage us to share some in a weekly riddle competition. This had always remained my favorite and in my memory because of the deliver and double entendres.

Pombinha Branca

Nationality: Brazilian
Age: 55
Occupation: Stay at Home
Residence: Brazil
Performance Date: 2022
Primary Language: Portuguese
Language: Spanish

S. is a 55-year-old female Brazilian immigrant from Sao Paolo and the rural vineyard areas of Brazil. She has lived in the U.S. for about seven years. She says this song was popular around the rural areas and her mother sang it around the house as she cleaned.

This was near an area in San Antonio with a large Brazilian population around all the Brazilian steakhouses. We were picking her and her family up from their work.

Pombinha branca, que está fazendo?
Lavando roupa pro casamento
Vou me lavar, vou me trocar
Vou na janela pra namorar
Passou um moço, de terno branco
Chapéu de lado, meu namorado
Mandei entrar
Mandei sentar
Cuspiu no chão
Limpa aí seu porcalhão!

/

Little White dove, what are you doing?

Washing laundry for the wedding.

I’m going to wash up, I’m going to get changed,

I’m going to the window to flirt.

 A young man in a white suit,

 Hat tilted to the side, my sweetheart,

 I had him come in,

 I had him sit down He spat on the floor.

 Clean up your filth there,

Have better manners.

Pombinha Blanca is a folk song or traditional lullaby sung in a playful key that quickly turns furious both in tempo and key after the “spitting on the floor.” S. mentioned the lullaby reinforced some funny gender norms, encouraging harmony, but presenting the consequences of masculinity spilling over into sloppiness. In this entry, the folk song intended for children indirectly teaches gender norms just as Oring cites in his chapter, Children’s folklore in Folk Groups and Folk Genres. After establishing the social norms of feminine presentations and its rituals.

Blind Dwarf Riddle

Nationality: USA
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

JD told us he had heard this riddle in elementary school, around 4th grade:

“You walk into a room and you find a dead man. And all that’s in the room is a noose, because he hung himself, and a cane, and sawdust. What happened?”

The other participants and I took a few shots in the dark, and JD said: “It’s so dumb there’s no way you’d ever get it.” When I suggested that I might have heard it before, he said “there’s no way you’ve heard this before.”

Eventually, JD revealed the answer:

“Obviously, the man is a blind dwarf clown — he works at the circus, so his entire source of income is being a freak at the circus. He’s in the circus tent, but there are termites and they eat the bottom of his cane. Since he’s blind he thinks he’s growing, so he’s losing his source of income, and so he kills himself.”

Informant background

JD is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from Las Vegas, NV.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

This riddle seems to be of the kind where it is amusing to hear the answer because of its silliness, rather than one that a guesser might realistically have a shot at. The fact that JD clued us in by saying “it’s so dumb” we’d never get it allowed us to not be as disappointed or frustrated in how silly the answer was when it came.

Pelican Soup Riddle

Nationality: USA
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

CT “heard this literally the other day” from one of his friends:

“A guy walks into a restaurant and asks for Pelican Soup. They serve it up to him and he tries it, then kills himself. Why did he kill himself?”

After we took several guesses to no avail, CT revealed the answer:

“The person was stranded on a desert island with their husband, wife, whatever. And after being stranded there a hella long time, in their delirium they ate their significant other under the impression that it was pelican soup, and when they get back to civilization they asked for pelican soup. And when it tasted completely different they killed themselves because they knew what happened.”

Informant background

CT is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from New York City.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

For another version of this riddle, called “Seagull Soup,” see the online riddle archive: https://www.riddles.com/archives/2581

Elephant Game

Nationality: USA
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/15/21
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

JD described a game called Elephant, where the person “in the know” running the game (the Teller) continues saying things following a hidden pattern until the pattern is found out by the guessers. JD learned this game from his friend PJ from Las Vegas, who “knows a bunch of these games.”

Some selections from our rounds:

JD: “There’s two elephants in the fire. There’s one elephant on Cy’s shoulder. How many elephants are there?”

               Answer: “There are 5 elephants.”

JD: “There’s 4 elephants in the big ol thing of IPA. There’s 2 elephants on that tree. How many elephants?”

               Answer: “There are 3 elephants.”

We went through about 10 rounds before we started to figure out the pattern.

The answer is that however many words are in the question asking how many elephants there are, is the number of elephants.

Informant background

JD is a student at the University of Southern California. He is from Las Vegas, NV.

Performance context

This story was told during a folklore collection event that I set up with a diversity of members from the USC men’s Ultimate Frisbee team. We were in a classic folklore collection setting: sharing drinks around a campfire, in a free flowing conversation.

Analysis

These interactive riddle games are often constructed so that the answer appears more complicated than it actually is. They often involve pointing out concrete objects, people, or places, so that the guesser’s attention is diverted to those specifics, while the real answer is something more abstract about the words used or delivery of the speaker. This paradigm shows up across almost all of the question-and-answer riddle games I have experienced.