Category Archives: Riddle

Riddle – United States

Nationality: African-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: April 23, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: French, Italian

“It was a Sunday in a mansion. There’s a family living in this big mansion, there’s a mom, a dad and three kids. Okay. The butler’s in the house. The maid’s in the house. The mail got delivered. The parents went out to the opera and came back and all the kids were dead. Who killed them?

The mailman because mail doesn’t get delivered on a Sunday.”

Alexa first heard the riddle at a softball retreat in Chicago in the tenth grade while doing community service with friends. She was cleaning up the campsite, taking away branches, leaves, and trash that should not be on the campsite. She and her friends were looking for ways to pass the time and her friend, Jared, started telling these riddles. She does not really know where the riddle is from but she believes that all riddles have some kind of truth behind them. She thinks that this might have happened in the 1900s, when someone showed up at a house who was not suppose to be there and murdered everyone. Alexa says that this riddle is pretty generic and it spreads quickly because it is often told in any circumstances where people are just waiting around. These riddles make people think a little bit and so, it helps get peoples’ minds off of thinking about the long amount time they have been waiting for something.

It clearly expresses the idea of violence, exhibiting the characteristics of a riddle. Riddles are often used to express ideas that are not polite or socially acceptable. No one takes riddles seriously, so it is okay to incorporate violence into them. They are taken lightly and no one thinks that the teller is being rude or creepy. I agree with Alexa when she says that the origins come from an actual murder. This could very well have happened and people could have taken the ideas of the murder and turned it into a riddle. It was probably not created right after the murder took place, but instead after the risible moment when humor about tragic events becomes acceptable. If it was made in the grace period, people would not have accepted the riddle and continued to share it with others because the topic was still too sensitive.

Riddle – Minnesota

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Hinsdale, Il
Performance Date: April 25, 2008
Primary Language: English

Riddle: Abalone

Riddle: There are two men celebrating a one-year anniversary of a shipwreck at a restaurant. One man (man #1) orders steak and the other man (man #2) orders abalone. The man that orders steak takes a bite and is satisfied.  The other man that orders abalone takes a bite, runs outside, and shoots himself. Why?

Answer: There were three people on a ship: the two men and the wife of man #2. When the ship is wrecked, the wife of man #2 dies, and the two men swim to a nearby island. One night, while waiting to be rescued, the two men needed food, so man #1 secretly serves man #2 his dead wife, telling him that he is eating abalone. At the restaurant a year later, man #2 takes a bite of abalone noting that it tastes nothing like the “abalone” he had on the island. Upon realizing that man #1 lied to him and that he didn’t eat abalone on the island, but rather he ate his wife, he went outside and shot himself.

Alex said he heard this riddle while he was at a summer camp called Outward Bound, located on the boundary waters of Minnesota. A fellow camper who was from upstate New York but was half-Japanese and half-French told it to him, but Alex does not know where the fellow camper learned it. They used it to pass the all the empty time they had. Alex says he still uses this riddle because it is fun and hard and nobody can ever get it. In order to make it a little tougher, sometimes he doesn’t mention that they were

celebrating an anniversary of a shipwreck, but usually people need that hint otherwise the riddle could take days to solve.

I am not sure why the fish is abalone as opposed to any other kind of fish. I suppose that since man #1 didn’t want man #2 knowing he was eating his own wife, he had to make up a really exotic fish name for man #2, a fish he has never eaten before so that he can’t recognize the taste. It is interesting to note that Alex heard this from a person of Japanese and French descent, but I don’t think this relates to the origins of the riddle. Abalone is found in many places throughout the world, so it is possible it came from Japan or France, but it is also very likely to have come from any number of places.

I have not heard this riddle other than from Alex. However, I use it in the same way as him. Whenever I am at a camp, or looking for a way to pass the time with friends, I give them this riddle and it usually keeps everyone entertained for an hour. This riddle is for all age groups and can be used anytime, not just with teenagers who are at camp looking to pass the time.

Catch Riddle – California

Nationality: Brazilian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Palos Verdes, CA
Performance Date: March 25, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Portuguese

Catch Riddle—USA

“If you ask someone to say I’m a Math Debater! Five times fast, it sounds like they are saying I’m a Masturbator!”

Marcelo informed me that this was one of his favorite riddles because it works every time, and because everyone always gets a good kick out of it.  He first heard it from one of his close friends when he was a junior at his high school, Palos Verdes Peninsula High in Southern California.  It is a pretty simple catch riddle; a way of getting someone to say something that they ordinarily would never, and is vulgar, inappropriate and hilarious.  Usually when someone performs the riddle, he or she does it in front of a large group of friends so that the victim will feel more embarrassed and sometimes even humiliated.  From Marcelo’s personal experience, the victim usually gets really red in the face and buries his face in his hands.  Right after this victim utters the phrase five times fast, there is a pause in the group, and everyone looks at each other, and then bursts out into laughter.  Though Marcelo does not know where the riddle originally came from he believes that he’s heard the same catch riddle throughout California, both southern and northern, so it likely originated somewhere on the west coast.  Either way, he has been using on kids at USC ever since he started school here in August 2007.

Riddle

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: March 12, 2008
Primary Language: English

Riddle

An American is in the kitchen.

What do you call him in the bathroom?

European.

Emilie told this riddle at dinner one night at Parkside Cafeteria in front of a group of friends.  It was a relaxing night where everyone was swapping jokes at the dinner table.  Emilie says that she first heard this riddle during elementary school, on the playground during recess.  She said this was a popular riddle that a lot of the school children sang.

Emilie’s riddle is a play on words and can be classified as an oppositional riddle.  “European” sounds like “you are peeing”, which is what one does in the bathroom.  I believe that this riddle is the result of childish antics because children find humor with bodily functions.  In addition, elementary school is when the children are learning new vocabulary and experimenting with words.  Furthermore, although neither Emilie nor I know when this riddle was invented, there could have possibly been Anti-European sentiment at the time the riddle was created.  This riddle associates Europeans with bathrooms, which usually carries a negative connotation.

Riddle – Mexican

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 46
Occupation: Tailor
Residence: Inglewood, CA
Performance Date: April 20, 2008
Primary Language: Spanish

Primer acto: una botella de agua

Segundo acto: un pato

Tercer acto: un mar

Conclusión? Agua pa tomar!

Act 1: a bottle of water

Act 2: a duck

Act 3: a sea

Conclusion? Water to drink!

Victoria said that she learned about this riddle when she was young, about 12 years old. It was presented to her by one of her sisters in Mexico. She said that it is simply a clever way to convey a message.

Although the riddle makes no sense when it is translated to English, it is a mind bender in Spanish. This is one of those riddles where you are shown pictures and you are supposed to figure out how each picture makes sense in the context and creates a phrase. In this one, the bottle of water is obviously water. But it gets tricky with the duck and sea. You are supposed to split up the word ‘pato’, thus having ‘pa’ (to) and ‘to’. But then you have to combine ‘to’ and mar’ to create ‘tomar’ (drink). Pretty basic, yet entertaining.