Category Archives: Riddle

Lana sube, lana baja

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/24/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My friend is a film student at the University of Southern California.  His mother’s side of the family is Mexican, and his father’s side of the family is Serbian.

My friend heard this riddle from a cousin 6 years ago during a New Year’s celebration.  The riddle is usually delievered as:
“Lana sube, lana baja.  Que es?”

Which translates to:

“Wool rises, wool falls.  What is it?”

He says that this riddle is supposed to be  asked very quickly in order to confuse the listener.  My friend remembers that his cousin asked the riddle very quickly and he wasn’t sure what she was asking for.

The central catch to the riddle is the pun on “lana baja.”  “Lana baja” sounds similar to “la navaja,” which means “the blade” in Spanish.  Because the riddle is delivered so quickly, the riddle could possibly sound like “Lana sube, la navaja.”

The proper answer to “Lana sube, lana baja.  Que es?”  is “Lana baja,” because that is where the potential confusion lies.  My friend says that there is a level of expectation for the recipient to answer correctly if the recipient is fluent in Spanish.  When the he was unable to provide an answer for the riddle the first time, his cousin laughed at him.
The riddle itself doesn’t have any inherent meaning – it functions primarily as a catch riddle that plays on the language.  However, my friend said that this is a shortened version of another rhyme.  He speculates that this version of the riddle is popular among children because it’s easy to remember and is catchy.

I agree with my friend’s interpretation of this riddle.  However, I think this version is more popular with children because it’s easier to remember and has a pretty straightforward function and meaning.  The other version of this riddle that the informant told me is used by older people, and can also be understood as a proverb.  This is why I think the longer version is more popular among adults, and the shorter version presented above is popular with children.  I also think that it might be perceived as more proper to use the proverbial version if you’re older than the person who you’re giving the riddle to.
The other version can be found on a separate post here:
http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/?p=19268

Lana sube, lana baja, el senor que la trabaja

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: College student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/24/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Lana sube, lana baja, el senor que la trabaja”

Translated: “Money rises, money falls, for the person who deals with money”

My friend heard this riddle from his grandmother on his mother’s side.  It is a riddle that is typically posed as a question, so the performer would add “Que es?”  at the end.

The riddle is usually said fairly quickly, as it functions primarily as a catch riddle.  The answer to the riddle is “lana baja.”  The riddle operates on the phrase “lana baja” because it sounds similar to “la navaja,” which is “the blade” in Spanish.  It is up to the listener to hear the riddle correctly and point out the misleading phrase.  If the listener can’t identify the catch in the riddle, the asker usually pokes fun at the listener.

My friend said that this riddle is part of a large group of riddles in Mexico that revolve around puns and catching the listener off guard.  He says that as far as he knows, this is one of the more popular riddles in that group.

The riddle can also act as a proverb, given as advice by the asker to the listener.

“Lana” in Spanish means “wool,” but it also can mean “money.”  My friend’s grandmother told him this riddle not only to try to catch him, but to pass down the lesson in the riddle as well.   The lesson is that whoever deals with money must also deal with its instability, its ability to go up and go down without much warning.  When the riddle refers to “el senor que la trabaja,” or the person who deals with money, it doesn’t refer to a specific profession that handles money.  Thus the lesson in the riddle carries pretty universally.

The informant said that this riddle has a shorter version that is purely a catch riddle.  He feels that this version is more popular with adults because it also offers advice to the listener.  The shorter version of the riddle does away with the proverb on money and uses the more literal meaning of “lana,” wool.

I heard this riddle shortly after the informant told me the shorter version.  I was very interested in how “lana” takes on a different meaning in this version and gives the riddle a second function.  It seems to me that in order for the catch riddles to be properly used and understood, the performer and listener have to be fluent in Spanish and understand intricacies of the language as well (such as informal meanings of words).

I’ve made an entry on the shorter version of this riddle, which can be found here:
http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/?p=19262

Door to Life or Death

Nationality: Irish-Armenian American
Age: 19
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2013
Primary Language: English

Form of Folklore:  Folk Belief (Riddle)

Informant Bio:  The informant was born and raised primarily in Glendale, California; he only left the United States for a two year period (from age fourteen to fifteen) to live in London, England.  Most of his knowledge of folklore is from his mother (of Irish decent), his father (of Persian-Armenian decent), and media such as the internet and television.

Context:  The interview was conducted on the porch of the informant’s house in the presence of two other informants.

Item:    So there’s the riddle of two doors and two guards; one door leads to life, one door leads to death, one guard will always tell the truth and one guard will always lie.  And the two guards are not attached to the doors; the truth teller is not, for example, attached to the door of life, nor is the liar attached to the door of death.  It could be in front of either one.  Your objective is to find out which one… your objective, should you choose to accept it… is to find out which door leads to life, by asking one guard one question.

The answer to the riddle is:  you ask whichever guard you wish, “what will the other guard say is the right door?”  If the guard you ask happens to be the truth teller, he will truthfully tell you that the other guard will point to the wrong door.  And if you ask the liar, “what will the truth teller say?” the liar will lie about what the truth teller will say and will point to the wrong door.  So either way, if you ask “what will the other guard say is the right door?” the guard you’re talking to will point at the wrong door.  And you go through the other one.

Informant Comments:  The informant was introduced to this riddle when he was in the sixth grade.  He believes it is an interesting riddle which helps students develop strong analytic skills starting from a very young age.  Personally, the informant enjoys riddles like this one, mainly because he likes to enhance his own way of thinking.

Analysis:  This riddle is mainly used to challenge those who attempt to solve it.  Having to figure out which question, when addressed to either the liar or the truth tell, would eliminate the importance of which guard you are talking to, forces those who are introduced to this folklore to use logical reasoning and laws of negation in order to identify the door to life.  Though they may not be aware of it, people are strengthening their reasoning skills by hearing this riddle and trying to solve it.  As a pleasant addition to the riddle, the informant added some humor by referencing a famous line from the Mission Impossible films.  By pausing to say, “your mission, should you choose to accept it”, the informant gave the riddle a lightened humorous feel.  This offered a nice balance to the performance of this folklore; the riddle was challenging and yet entertaining at the same time.

Kingdom Race

Nationality: Arab American
Age: 20
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Arabic

Form of Folklore:  Folk Speech (Riddle)

Informant Bio:  The informant was born and raised in Glendale, California.  Most of the folklore he has been exposed to comes primarily from his father, who is of Arabic decent.  Other folklore has been attained either through media sources (i.e. Reddit) or through personal life experiences in America.

Context:  The interview was conducted on the porch of another informant’s house in the presence of two other informants

Item:    A king of a land has two sons and he’s slowly dying.  He tells his sons that one of them will inherit the thrown but to do so they’re gonna have a competition; they’re gonna race each other.  He gives them both horses and tells them, “The last horse to show up to the finish line will get to inherit the throne.”  So the two brothers… they get on the horses and they both start racing as fast as they can, and they both want the throne.  How is this possible?

The answer is that they got on the other person’s horse and they raced.  So whoever showed up first (whoever was riding that horse) would actually be the winner… because their horse showed up next.

Informant Comments:  The informant’s father told him this riddle.  He believes it is most likely rooted in some sort of truth; the thought being that there could have been a king who asked his sons to race for the thrown, but most likely did not say that the looser of the race would be the winner of the kingdom.  Whether the riddle is based in truth or not, the informant believes this riddle is an entertaining folklore to help pleasantly pass time with friends and family.

Analysis:  This riddle, unlike most, is built from a mini-narrative.  The beginning presents a problem:  the king is dying and the next king must be determined.  The solution to this problem is a horse race, but it is left to the listener to determine how it is possible for the two sons to want the thrown and yet try to have the horse they are on finish first (when the owner of the last horse will be the next king).  Having this riddle presented in a possibly real scenario makes the listener feel as though they may be faced with a riddle similar to this one in real life.

Joke: Theather humor

Nationality: American-White
Age: 25
Occupation: Lab Administrator/ researcher
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 18 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Intermediate French

Joke

“What has two legs, a tail, and bleeds profusely?”

“Half a cat.”

My informant got this joke in high school. It was everyone’s favorite joke in her Theater class. Sometimes they would just text each other “Half a cat”. The informant says that she thought it was funny in an unexpected and twisted way.  It was mostly funny because it was an inside joke within the theater group. She said it in-jokes were in common in her theater class, they wouldn’t make sense to people outside the class.

This is kind of a joke riddle. The humor comes from the fact that the person thinks the answer is going to something they don’t know but then the answer is actually really simple. It actually reminds me of a joke from one of my favorite books How NOT to write a Novel “Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half of a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess ” (Mittelmark and Newman) Apparently in American society dead cats are a source of humor.