Category Archives: Riddle

Riddle: If a rooster…

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (Environmental Sciences)
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

Q: If a rooster lays an egg on a roof, does the egg roll down the left or the right side?

A: Roosters don’t lay eggs.

My informant learned this riddle in elementary school from a classmate, and it became her favorite riddle when she told it to her parents and they couldn’t answer it correctly.

The structure of the riddle is a familiar one that leads the audience to focus on the question (which way does the egg roll?) rather than the subject (the rooster laying the egg), because they have been conditioned by past experience with riddles to expect either a play on words or for the answer to be in the question. The answer subverts both expectations. This could be considered a catch riddle, since both a “left” and “right” answer would show that the audience had missed the point of the riddle.

The reason my informant liked the riddle so much as a child supports the theory that much of children’s folklore exists to empower children or to undermine the control of authority figures. That roosters can’t lay eggs is common knowledge, even for children, and children are delighted when people who are supposedly more knowledgeable than them fail to notice the obvious impossibility of the riddle.

Joke – What’s Black and White and Re(a)d All Over?

Nationality: Mexican-American (2nd. Gen)
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downey, California
Performance Date: January 2007
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Q: What’s black and white and red all over?

A: A newspaper.

My informant first heard this riddle in third grade during a show and tell in her elementary school in Downey, CA.  Some of her classmates that did not have anything to show could just tell a joke they knew.  One of her classmates gave this riddle, and no one had been able to figure it out in her class.  A newspaper is certainly black and white, and it is “read” all over.  The children persistently thought what object could be the colors black, white, and “red,” so they were stumped.

Riddles like these are handy for entertainment purposes.  I believe that people tell such riddles because they would like to engage a crowd big or small.  When told a riddle, people are naturally inclined to solve it, and if they give up, they are eager to know the answer.  Usually the answer is a very simple one whereas people trying to solve the riddle looked too deeply into it.  That is also very entertaining when the answer turns out to be something that was so obvious, but they never thought it would be that easy.

 

Annotation: This riddle was in the 1995 movie “Batman Forever” in which the villain, the Riddler, played by actor Jim Carey asks this riddle.

Korean Wordplay

Nationality: Korean
Age: 62
Occupation: Truck Driver
Residence: Cerritos, California
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: Korean

  • Me – It’s weird (or “Teeth will rot”).
  • X – Then go to a dentist.

My informant claims he had created this joke himself.  Nonetheless when he used it on others, they were not surprised saying they have heard the joke before.  Perhaps he did originally think of the joke but others also thought of it simultaneously.  This joke is a play on words.  To say, “It’s weird,” in Korean uses the exact same wording as saying, “Teeth will rot.”  He thought of the joke when he misinterpreted his wife.  While she was stating that something was weird, he took it as her saying that she had a toothache.  Without paying close attention, he advised her to go to the dentist.  Upon hearing such an arbitrary piece of advice, his wife understood his misinterpretation and laughed at him.  Ever since then, which was about a decade ago, he tells a person to go to a dentist if he or she says something is weird.

“It’s weird” and “Teeth will rot” are not just similar; they sound and are spelled exactly the same way.  It is easy to see why someone may accidentally misinterpret the two meanings.  Misinterpretations can be hilarious, so it is not wonder this turned into a joke with several people thinking of it at the same time.

Nationality: Singaporean Chinese
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Hinghwa, Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, English

照

Zhao

Shine

一个日本人，

yi ge ri ben ren

One Japanese Man

站在门口，

zhan zai men kou

Standing at the doorway

拿着一把刀，

na zhe yi ba dao

Holding a knife

杀了四个人。

sha le si ge ren

He kills four people

 

This was learned by my informant when she was growing up in Singapore in school, when she was about ten or eleven years of age. While she can’t quite recall who she learnt it from, she said it was rather useful for learning characters in Chinese.  It is in essence a word riddle, in which the bottom four lines would be told to the other person and the other person would try to guess what the word was.

Even though there is supposedly nothing meant by the content (morbid as it is), it is just there because it fits the word. However, when my informant was growing up during the 1950s and 60s in Singapore there was a great deal of resentment against the Japanese for WWII. The words of this riddle could originate as a subtle form of anti-Japanese rebellion or statement for the brutal acts that they performed in Singapore and most of South East and East Asia.

During World War II, it was very common for Japanese soldiers to enter houses indiscriminately and slaughter whole families for numerous trumped up charges, like being Chinese, or having a wife that the soldier found mildly attractive or even looking at them wrong. Therefore this might be a reflection of not only this anti-Japanese sentiment but also oppositional culture.

Riddle – American

Nationality: Switzerland, Russia, Poland, Belgium
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tucson, AZ
Performance Date: April 24, 2007
Primary Language: English

Notes:

The subject learned this riddle/joke in her AP English class in her senior year of high school. After the AP test the teacher and students sat around and exchanged riddles. The teacher offered up the following riddle: “A man walks into a restaurant and orders a bowl of albatross soup. So he puts down his spoon, pushes in his chair, goes home, and shoots himself. Why did the man kill himself? Well a bunch of people, including the man and his wife were stranded on an island after their cruise ship sank. The people soon ran out of food and the man’s wife dies of starvation. The people don’t know what to do so they say they caught an albatross and they turn it into soup, the man along with everyone else stranded on the island lives off of the ‘albatross soup.’ The people stranded on the island finally get rescued. Later on the man goes to a restaurant and orders albatross soup to remember his time on the island. Only the albatross soup doesn’t taste like it did back on the island…that’s because the man wasn’t eating albatross soup on that island, he and everyone else was eating his wife!”

The joke is not really funny to the subject but she likes the idea of the riddle because no one ever really gets it. She doesn’t find it funny because, she says that if she put herself in that position she would kill herself also.

I think the joke is a play on existential irony and that if I were that guy, before killing myself, would kill everyone else who lived off of my wife and lied to me about what it was.