Category Archives: Riddle

Make something round

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Student
Residence: LA
Primary Language: English

Informant places 5 sticks on the counter, all parallel to each other.

“Make something round from these sticks, only moving two of them.”

The informant takes the two outside sticks, and places them perpendicular to and above the 2nd and 5th sticks. This forms three letters, which together spell “TIT”.

“So when I was about 10 or so, I went out to visit my uncle. I always used to visit him during the summer. By this time, I was getting older and I had always had older brothers, so, ya know, I was starting to figure some things out. I guess my uncle picked up on this and wanted to initiate me into becoming a man or something. So I go to his house, and he asks if I want to hear a riddle. I say yes, so he lays out 5 sticks and asks him to make something round while only moving two. I consider myself smart, but I couldn’t figure it out. So he shows me, and he got so excited about it.”

This particular riddle seems to be something of a coming-of-age ritual, a way to initiate a young boy into becoming a teenager. This transition is often accompanied by increased interest in sex. This riddle seems to be a way to gradually push the subject over the liminal, and onto the path toward adulthood.

53 Bicycles

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 10, 2015
Primary Language: English

Riddle:

A man was found murdered in a room with 53 bicycles. Why was he murdered?

 

The Informant was a nineteen year old female friend that I had dinner with. I told her about the catch riddle we learned in class (what do virgins eat?) and she began telling me all of these riddles that she knew.

Collector: He was a bad man?

Informant: No.

Collector: Did he steal all of the bicycles?

Informant: Nope, try again.

(After several minutes of guessing and failing, she gave a pivotal hint)

Informant: Think of Bicycles as a brand, not as objects. I told you this was a hard one.

Answer via Informant: Well, bicycles is a type of card – you know, poker cards…bicycle playing cards. You’ve heard of those, right? Yeah, yeah. And how many cards are in a deck? Yeah, 52. So the guy was cheating, he had an extra card… so they killed him!(Seemed a little too excited by this).

Collector: Where’d you get this riddle from?

Informant: A high school friend.

Riddles in general are very interesting considering that nothing is ever what it seems to be. You have to really think outside of the box in order to figure out the answer, but it also makes it difficult when a person is not familiar to something that’s being referenced, such as with the brand “bicycles”. I told the same riddle to my dad and he had never heard of Bicycle playing cards, which made it pretty much impossible for him to figure out the answer. So, it can be considered a way of distinguishing between groups: those that understand the references and those who don’t.

3 for a Dollar

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 10, 2015
Primary Language: English

Riddle:

A man walks in a hardware store and asks “How much are those?” the clerk says “three for a dollar.” The man takes one hundred, pays a dollar and walks out. What did he buy?

 

The Informant was a nineteen year old female friend that I had dinner with. I told her about the catch riddle we learned in class (what do virgins eat?) and she began telling me all of these riddles that she knew.

Collector: Wait, he bought one hundred of them for a dollar when only three are for a dollar? That makes no sense.

Informant: That’s why it’s a riddle, duh, but it does have an answer – in case you were wondering.

Collector: Did the man steal 97 items?

Informant: Nope. He paid for everything just fine and walked out.

(After several minutes of guessing and failing, she gave a pivotal hint)

Informant: You find these on the front of a house, and every house has this.

Answer via Informant: It’s the address on the house, the address is one hundred. Get it? One hundred has three numbers, three for a dollar? He bought a one and two zeros – for a dollar. Get it? He literally bought “100”. Three digits.

Collector: Did your high school friend tell you this one too?

Informant: Yup.

This riddle wasn’t quite as exclusionary as other riddles that require the person to understand certain references. This one was pretty straight forward with objects that everyone is familiar with .

 

 

 

Testudo the Turtle and the Virgin Graduate

Nationality: American
Age: 68
Occupation: Senior Vice President of a research institution
Residence: San Diego
Performance Date: 4/18/15
Primary Language: English

Then there’s the folklore of Testudo. It’s the statue at the University of Maryland, of a land turtle, a terrapin, it’s this big turtle it sits on a big granite, uh…pedestal, in front of the library. And his nose is really shiny, because people rub his nose for good luck. Whenever you pass by him. And the legend is that when a virgin graduates from the University of Maryland, the turtle will do a backflip. And no one’s ever seen the turtle move. Put that in there!

 

Do you remember when you first heard it?

 

Orientation! Freshmen orientation.

 

Who told it to you?

 

The Orientation leader.

 

ANALYSIS:

This turtle statue is clearly a point of pride and identification for the University and its students. Located in the middle of campus, and symbolic of their school pride (it being their mascot), it is in the public eye and everyone seems to participate in the traditions surrounding it. First, there’s the belief that if you rub its nose you will have good luck – which is a unifying ritual that all students can share, and enforces their school culture. Second, the joke that implies that no virgin has every graduated from the University of Maryland is also clearly a point of pride and culture. And third, the fact that orientation leaders distribute this tale to new students as a kind of intitiatory introduction to what the school culture is all about, shows that the students pride themselves (and make fun of themselves) for “getting around” and having fun in college. This is saying to the new students, welcome, you will have fun here and I promise you will get laid in college – with a subtle warning that if you don’t, everyone will know you’re a virgin because the statue will do a backflip! You don’t want that humiliation or want to kill the tradition.

Nothing Riddle

Nationality: Lithuanian, english, russian, dutch
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/30/15
Primary Language: English

My informant is a 19-year-old college student who grew up in Chicago, Illinois, then moved out to California where she now attends the University of Southern California. Both her parents are from a Jewish background and her ethnicity is Dutch, Russian, Lithuanian, and English.

I asked my informant if she could provide me with any riddles. She quickly perked up and gave me the first one that came to her head which also was her favorite:

Riddle: What’s greater than god, more evil than the devil, poor people have it, rich people need it, and if you eat it you will die.

I sat and guessed a lot of ridiculous things as she smiled at me. I had a feeling it was going to be one of those answers I was not going to like, and low and behold I was right.

Informant: “Do you give up? The answer is nothing. Nothing is greater than god, nothing is more evil than the devil, rich people need nothing, poor people have nothing, and if you eat nothing you will die”

I was not very pleased with the answer, but I think this is the reason of the riddle. It is the same idea behind young children telling riddles. They have an answer to something that they know you will most likely not guess. This knowledge of some unknown gives them a sense of power over the older adult that they are talking to and this creates an element of humor for children.

Informant: “I learned it a long time ago, probably when I was in middle school. Like anything else, I learned it from a friend and then went on to stump all of my friends who then probably went on to stump their friends. I definitely told it to my parents at some point and got a lot of enjoyment out of fooling them”.

Riddles such as this one are considered humorous in some ways because the answer is not apparent. The unknown answer creates this humor and the big reveal of the answer to the unexpected guesser acts almost as a punch line to a joke.