Tag Archives: Riddle

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.

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.

El Mamey

Nationality: Cuban
Age: 62
Occupation: House Cleaner
Residence: Torrance, Ca
Performance Date: 4/22/2012
Primary Language: Spanish

“Iva por un caminito y me encontre un barilito, le meti el dedito y me salio coloradito. Que es?”

English:

I was going down a road & I found a small little barrel, I stuck my finger in it and it came out red. What is it?

Answer: El Mamey ( A fruit with a brown rind and an orange-red center)

This cuban riddle (dichos) is one based on agriculture, as much of their folklore is. Their culture is very much crop-based, so this is logical. My informant, having been raised as a field worker in cuba, knows many of these riddles and sayings.

El Platano or The Banana

Nationality: Cuban
Age: 62
Occupation: House Cleaner
Residence: Torrance, Ca
Performance Date: 4/22/2012
Primary Language: Spanish

“Oro parece plata no es, el que no adivine bien tonto es.”

English:

It looks like gold but silver it is not, who ever does not guess is really dumb.

This cuban dichos, or riddle, is a clever play on words. Anyone who speaks even rudimentary spanish can likely guess at this one when hearing it spoken out loud, hence the insult towards those who cannot answer it. “Plato no es,” or the “it’s not silver,” of the riddle sounds very much like “platanos,” or banana. My informant, as someone who often worked with crops as a field worker in cuba up until her early twenties, heard many riddles and saying involving fruit and other crops. With platanos being one of cuba’s main exports it’s of little surprise that a few of Cuba’s narratives and riddles center around them.

Advanced Easter Egg Hunt

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25th, 2012
Primary Language: English

“So, my mom is an artist, she’s a painter, and my dad did, um like a lot of writing and stuff, he’s like an English dude. He’s American. Anyways. Um, for Easter, we would, we would have Easter Egg hunts, my sister and I. And um, it started off, we’d come, we’d come downstairs and there’d be these Easter eggs, and you’d open it, and it’d be a scrap of paper that would be cut in a weird shape, and on one side would be like, a part of a drawing, but you don’t know what the drawing is, and on the other side, would be, um, a clue. A poem or a limerick my dad made. That would lead you to, it would be a clue to like, find the next egg, in a different part of the house. And so you’d read the clues and try to find each egg, until you, you finally find the basket. And each of these papers, its the poem on one side and the drawing on the other, and once you got the basket, you’d have all the pieces, you assemble them and you tape it together, and then you’d flip it over and it’d be, like my mom would have, um, she’d uh, she’d have drawn like an Easter themed drawing, like one of them was like me from my senior yearbook photo, but with bunny ears drawn on, and she, um, also drew like the Scream, but with like bunny ears. It’d be a clever take on Easter themes.”

 

This tradition interests me, because it takes the candy, which is usually what Easter is about for kids, and makes it secondary. The riddle clues the source’s dad wrote are almost a sneaky way of making Easter Egg Hunts educational. It is also a way for both of the source’s parents to pass down their love for the arts to their children, and it worked, as the source never mentioned candy once when talking about the Easter Egg Hunt, she remembers her parents for being artists, and taking time to create something for her and her sister.