Category Archives: Riddle

The Impossible Men and the Rabbit

Nationality: Slovenian
Age: 54
Occupation: electrical engineer
Residence: San Jose, CA
Performance Date: 2014-04-24
Language: Slovenian, English, German, Serbian, Greek

“Nekoč so šle trije počaci.

Eden je bil slep,

Drugi je bil nag,

Treti je bil hrom.

Slepi je zajca videl,

Hromi ga je ujel,

Nagi ga je pod srajso del.”

—

Translation:

“There once went three together slowly –

One was blind,

The second was naked,

The third was lame.

The Blind one saw a rabbit,

the Lame one caught it,

and the Naked one put it under his shirt.”

Born and raised in former Yugoslavia, what is now known as Slovenia, the informant was continuously exposed to folk traditions that originated and permeated this region. The informant knows very little about the origins of this joke, but he compares them to many of popular self-contradictory English limericks, such as “One bright day in the middle of the night . . . ” The translation into English really tarnishes its humor, as the cadence of the joke is broken. The rhyme scheme is also distroyed as the punchline of the original joke cleverly rhymes with the line before it. Slovenian also has this incredible quality of succinctness, whereby a speaker can use an adjective, such as “lame” or “blind,” and turn it into a noun, generating much of humor from this reductive address (i.e. a man who is naked becomes simply “the Naked”).

Albacore Riddle

Nationality: Vietnamese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Huntington Beach, CA
Performance Date: 4/29/14
Primary Language: English
Language: Vietnamese

 

Albacore Riddle

Personal Background:

Lillian Tran is a 19 year old student at the University of California, Irvine studying journalism. She has grown up in a one hundred percent Vietnamese family, and is very proud of many traditions her family has.

Riddle:

There is one riddle she loves to tell since it is very difficult.

“A man who took a bite of an albacore sandwich, and then he started to cry. Why did he do that?”

The way this type of riddle works that the people who are answering it can only ask yes or no questions to the person who asked it. Through a series of questions, it turns out that the man is blind, and at one time, he was on a desert island with his friend and his wife. His friend had told him his wife had died and that they should eat the albacore they had. The man is crying because the albacore sandwich he is eating does not taste like the albacore he ate on island, meaning that he was not eating the albacore, but he was eating his wife, and he could not tell since he was blind.

Lillian first heard this riddle on Thanksgiving with her family. She had to sit at the kid’s table since she was younger. To pass the time, her cousins started telling her riddles. It scared her more than anything. She was afraid something like this could actually happen to her. It has made her afraid of albacore sandwiches ever since.

Analysis:

Riddles tend to not be very popular in the United States, and tend to be seen more for children. They really play on the power of words, and can have different meaning for different people. This is known as a “true riddle” since there are enough clues asked throughout that the person should be able to answer.

To me, this riddle is a way to stay connected with her family and to have a good time with her friends. It is a fun party trick to be able to come up with this riddle, and it can bring a conversation to the room. It is a way to get people in a room to converse when things get tense because everyone has to agree on questions to ask. Riddles are a fun way to play brain games and come up with games for everyone.

Deer Crossing

Nationality: White
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Huntington Beach, CA
Performance Date: 4/29/14
Primary Language: English

Deer Crossing

Personal Background:

My sister, Katie, is a senior in high school in Huntington Beach, California. She has been very involved with cross country and track and field in her school. She will be graduating this year, 2014, and will be studying art when she gets to college.

Joke:

There is one joke Katie uses whenever people ask for jokes.

Katie: What do you call a deer with no eyes?

Me: What?

Katie: No eye deer!

What makes this joke so important to my sister is that she heard it from my brother a few years ago, and she thought it was hilarious. She is not sure where he heard it, but it may have been on TV for from a little kid. What made it great was the fact that three of us would try to make each other laugh by saying the punch line in a new and funny ways. The more someone sounded like they were from the south, the better it was. The goal was to see who could be the funniest. They now use it as an inside joke or say it during awkward situations.

Analysis:

Jokes are a great way to spread folklore. They are all about speech, and how speech can be changed in order to get a different answer than what was originally thought. They are very similar to riddles in that sense.

To me, this joke is a way to keep the family connected. It keeps my brother, sister, and me close, even when we are all living in different places.

 

Time to Investigate

Nationality: Japanese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Huntington Beach, CA
Performance Date: 4/28/14
Primary Language: English

Time to Investigate

Personal Background:

Tiara is sophomore at California State University, Long Beach and she is studying accounting. She has grown up with Japanese and German influences since she has a mother from Japan, and a father who grew up in a German household. Even with her diverse family, she loves being part of American culture.

Joke:

Tiara loves telling jokes that have a pun involved. She works with children, so a lot of the jokes she hears are from kids.

Tiara: What do you call an alligator in a vest?

Me: What?

Tiara: An investigator!

She loves being able to tell this joke. She had heard it from one of the kids she works with, and she decided to tell the joke to a group of her friends when they went to a reptile museum. She thought the timing was right since there was an alligator in the museum. All of her friends gave her really good feedback from the joke. When asked about the connection with the joke, she said she really liked the little girl she heard it from, but the day Tiara used it herself was a day her friend was able to conquer her fear of snakes and hold one. She feels really happy when she thinks about it because it reminds her of a day she was able to make her friends feel good.

Analysis:

This joke is part of folklore because of the way it uses its words. Jokes are a way to use the power of words and how they can affect the punchline. Jokes usually involve using words that sound similar to get something different for an outcome.

To me, this joke is bringing childhood into adult world. We are still able to laugh at jokes from younger kids. They are always coming up with new ones, and they are always going to be changing.

The Hat

Nationality: Korean American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/18/2014
Primary Language: English

The Hat

My friend was born in the U.S. He is currently a second year at USC.

The riddle goes like this:

Q: There are three people who were abducted by an alien. They are each blindfolded and put in a straight line. They are told that there are two black hats and a white hat. Each one of the abducted people is wearing either a white hat or a black hat. The last person in line can see both people’s heads in front of him, the second person can only see the first person’s head, and the first person can’t see anything. The alien then says that if they can guess the correct color of the hats, then they will be let free. Who speaks up and what answer would he give?

A: The person standing last in line would speak up only if he sees that the hats in front of him are the same color. If the colors were opposites then person in the middle would speak up. The middle guy would know that the person behind him is quiet because the hats in front of him are two different colors. By this deduction, the man in the middle knows that whichever color hat he is wearing is the opposite of the hat color he sees in front of him, and the same as the color of the hat color behind him.

The Analysis:

Me: Where did you hear this riddle?

J: My friend, Daniel Chun.

Me: When did you hear it?

J: I heard it about a month and a half ago. After sophomore accountability, we were just chilling in another friend’s room.

Me: Do you guys do this often?

J: Oh yeah, we just chill, share stories, talk, and stuff.

 

It should be noted that there was a similar riddle to this one about hats and prisoners but without aliens.