Category Archives: Riddle

Argentine Riddle

Nationality: Argentinian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Performance Date: 04/09/2017
Primary Language: Spanish

Main piece:

  1. Q: Lana sube, lana baja. Qué es?

La navaja.

  1. Wool up, wool down. What is it?

The knife.

  1. Wool goes up, wool goes down. What is it?

The knife.

Background information about the piece by the informant: Emanuel was born and raised in Argentina, where this is a common joke riddle. He says it is exclusively Argentinian, as it can only be understood in Spanish being a play on words, and can only be funny in Argentina, as its humor is very specific to the country.

Context on the piece: This is an innocent joke riddle in which the answer is much more simpler than what is expected. In Spanish “Wool goes down” is “Lana baja”, which sounds like “La Navaja”, meaning “The knife”. The audience is supposed to break their heads finding a hidden meaning in the ambiguous question, while the answer is an obvious play on words. It’s a classic “it was so simple the whole time” joke. This makes the person trying to give an answer seem dumb for not knowing such a simple question, so the comedy if for the performer instead of the audience, as he gets to make fun of the person trying to give the answer.

Thoughts on the piece: Emanuel claims the riddle can only work for Argentine sensibilities, which can tell us that this is a society of pranksters who enjoy simple jokes. This joke could be either for kids or adults due to its simplicity and inoffensive nature, despite its point being leaving a person dumbfounded. It also creates a strong sense of community when only people who speak Spanish in Argentine can get the joke.

Bread Riddle

Nationality: Japanese
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: University Gateway Apartments
Performance Date: 4/25/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

Informant CS is a student at USC who is currently studying physical therapy. He is Japanese, born and raised in Japan, and went to school at an international school in Japan.

CS: “This is a really well known Japanese riddle that I don’t know if it counts as folklore but it’s more of a joke. [says something in Japanese].”

*later I found the original in Japanese: パンはパンでも食べられないパンは、なぁに？

Dude how do I even know what you’re saying

CS: “You can find it online for sure. Anyways, in english it translates to ‘bread is bread, but what bread is inedible?’. The answer is: ‘a frying pan’. Obviously that makes no sense in english, BUT, in Japanese, the word for “bread” is also “pan”, so, if you take that, it is a play on words and the riddle is actually ‘Pan is pan but what pan is inedible?’.”

…..

Thoughts: I mean… that was amongst one of the lamest jokes I’ve ever heard in my life but I guess its a joke riddle so it makes sense. I know in Chinese there are a lot of riddles like that where the answer to the riddle is a play on the original riddle’s word. But when my friend he would tell me a riddle I was expecting something better than this…

Pair of Chinese Number Riddles

Nationality: Taiwanese-American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Performance Date: April 22, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

“A riddle… This one, this one’s uhh, a good riddle, because it also translates to English. So it’s umm, there’s a fisherman, oh, umm…

So you know how there’s Chinese New Year, right? And fifteen days after Chinese New Year, because Chinese New Year is a two-week celebration, fifteen day celebration, and the last day is the lantern festival. And at a traditional lantern festival, you uhh, you have a parade with a bunch of lanterns, you eat, like, a specific food, which is called like… Literal translation is, like, ‘soup balls,’ but it’s like, uhh, kinda like mochi kinda thing, it’s rice, rice balls, and like, sugar water… and then, umm, you also do riddles, that’s like also part of the festival.

So I learned this riddle when I was participating in that holiday, we had like… something… umm… and the riddle is:

‘A fisherman went out one day, and, umm… so first he caught… 6 fish without the head, then 9 fish without the tail, then 8 fish except these fish were only half a fish each. How many fish did he catch in total?’ ”

Like… whole fish?

“It’s a riddle! [laughs]

Okay, the answer is zero. And you’re like, ‘What the, what the heck?’ Because umm, if you take the number 6, and write it in Arabic numerals, and you take off the top half, it becomes 0. Same with the 9, if you take the bottom half it becomes 0. If you take 8 and you cut it in half, then it’s 0. So you have 0+0+0! [laughs]

It’s some trickery! Yeah!”

Why Arabic numerals?

“Umm, well, this isn’t, this isn’t like a really old one, but like, I just learned this one in the context of this Chinese event. And like, Chinese people like numbers, too, you know? [laughs]

It’s part of it, So like, I dunno if this part is a trick. There’s a version where… Is there a version? No, I don’t remember any other specific riddles, but I know there were a lot that had to deal with, like, what the actual Chinese numbers were written as in Chinese. I don’t remember any of those riddles. But I remember there was like a series of them…

Oh! There’s one… umm… it’s uhh… what is… you take half of six and round down, what is it. And you need to know how six is written in Chinese. It’s written like… dot on top, straight line, and then two dashes that are like kinda sloped into each other on the bottom. And you take half of six and round down, the actual meaning of the riddle is: You look at the bottom half of six, and that’s what eight is written as.

So then the question would be like half of six, round down. And all the little kids would be like ‘three!’ And you’d be like ‘no!!! It’s eight!’ And then they circle it on the board, and you go ‘wooooooow!’ [laughs]

Yeah, so that was like, basic level riddles.

American Proverb.

Nationality: American
Age: 33
Occupation: Banker
Residence: New York, New York.
Performance Date: 04/17/16
Primary Language: English

Subject: Proverb.

Informant:

Brandon grew up in Sacramento California to a practicing Jewish family. He is an only child and works as a financial advisor at a back in New York City.

Original script: This too shall pass. “My grandmother on my mothers side always said it, she literally said it for everything.
Happy or sad, she always said this too shall pass, it to me is a reminder to enjoy every moment because nothing lasts forever, sorrow fades as much as the happiness does. To me it’s not negative, it is grounding, and a reminder that change is constant.”

Background Information about the Piece by the informant: The informant had a tattoo of the proverb on his foot. He got it to remind him to always live in the moment.

Context of the Performance: No context.

Thoughts about the piece: Like most proverbs, this one is used to guide someone in times of hardship. I can also relate it to the American Future Worldview that Dundes wrote about in his article “Thinking Ahead”.

O Que É, O Que É?

Nationality: Brazilian
Age: 45
Occupation: Business Administrator
Residence: Brazil
Performance Date: April 26, 2016
Primary Language: Portuguese
Language: English, Spanish

Informant was a 45 year old female who was born in Brazil and currently lives in Brazil. I talked to her over Skype.

Informant: So this is a game of riddle. It’s like a riddle, but it’s also a game. It’s called “O que é o que é,” which is “What is it What is it.” You come up with the riddles at school with friends. It’s something that you need to make people think and have fun. It’s our popular culture. It’s very used with kids, kids play with that a lot. You give clues to what a thing is by describing it, and then the other people have to guess what it is.

Collector: Can you maybe give me an example?

Informant: Ok, for example

O que é o que é

It is deaf and mute but tells everything?

Collector: I don’t know.

Informant: A book. (Laughs)

O que é o que é

That is always broken when it’s spoken?

Collector: Promises?

Informant: Secrets, but close. Last one,

O que é o que é

Is extremely thin, has teeth, but never eats, and even without having money gives food to whoever is hungry?

Collector: What?

Informant: The fork. These are just some examples. I remember a lot of them because they were a really big part of my childhood.

Collector: Why do you like this particular piece of folklore?

Informant: I like it because we used to have a lot of fun we used to play with it all the time, everyone used to have one of these riddles and we used to play all the time, it makes you think and it’s funny. Everytime we were with friends and we were talking or even with family we used to play, but mainly with friends, we used to read books about this to tell friends. It’s just a happy time, we used to play a lot and it was funny.

I remember hearing these riddles when I was a kid. Every time I would go on a road trip, my parents would say these riddles to me about things that would pass by our windows, and it was a fun way to pass the time. It’s really cool to learn that this was also a part of my mother’s childhood, and that she would often play this riddle game with her friends – something I never did. Although it’s mostly a children’s thing, any Brazilian will recognize the famous phrase “o que é o que é” as a riddle. A lot of the riddles are actually quite silly, such as the ones that my mother told me, but it is because they are so silly that they make people laugh.