Tag Archives: Riddle

Humpty Dumpty

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/22/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Me: Can you tell me some familiar story or rhyme you remember?

Informant:       “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

                               Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,

                               All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,

                               Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

Me: When did you hear this?

Informant: “This nursery rhyme was something I heard in grade school.”

The informant thought of this rhyme first when prompted for a piece of folklore, and demonstrated that despite an inter-cultural upbringing, this rhyme still featured prominently in her childhood. It would seem the Mother Goose style nursery rhymes, of which this is one, have become globalized and are no longer a purely western phenomenon, since despite an international heritage, the informant still seemed to associate their childhood most strongly with this rhyme, and recited it in its traditional form.

Lawnmower Riddle

Nationality: American
Age: 59
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: 4/27/13
Primary Language: English

The informant describes a riddle about an old man and a lawnmower.  The informant explains that he heard this from a friend at work and found it a fun riddle that made him think outside of the box and left him unable to figure out the answer.  Below is a summary of the riddle:

A friend of mine has a father who is sixty-five and has mowed his own lawn for years and years and he has a gas-powered, push lawnmower.  He has lived at the same place, cut the same grass, and used the same lawnmower for years and years.  He began to complain that the lawnmower wasn’t working properly.  He used to be able to cut the grass on one tank of gas and now he had to fill the lawnmower up with gas before he could finish the job.  He took the lawnmower to a small engine repair shop in town and the shop gave a full tune up on the machine – new spark plug and general touch up.  He picked up the lawnmower and went back to weekly task of mowing the lawn but was quite frustrated because despite having spent money to tune it up, it still took a refill of gas before finishing.  The question is, what is wrong with the lawnmower? The answer to this riddle is that nothing had changed about the lawnmower, but what had changed was that the man was sixty-five years old and walking slower to cut the grass.  That explains why it took more gas.

This riddle is a classic example of a scenario that forces one to think outside of the box or normal thought patterns.  Riddles such as this one are quite common within the United States and around the world.  Their popularity most likely stems from individuals’ desire to prove their intelligence and ability to solve problems.  The riddle being about a man with a lawn and a lawnmower indicates that this riddle originated from a society that has lawnmowers and lawns to mow.  It is likely that a joke involving these two things would not exist in a society without lawns or grass.

Psychopath Tests

Nationality: Taiwanese-American
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: February 15, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

My friend one day decided to ask me these tests that he had heard circulating around the school. Supposedly, they were meant to determine how psychopathic you were. You weren’t supposed to know that they were tests for that, and you were supposed to treat it as a riddle. He was very interested in psychology, but he didn’t believe these tests were at all accurate indicators at all. To him, these were just jokes and pseudo-psychology that he intended to ask me just for fun. They were of no real significance to him other than to just know how I considered these problems and how I solved them. However, these tests started appearing after a presentation from the father of a girl who had died from the Columbine shootings. People were beginning to take them seriously, according to my friend.

These are riddles for you. I will give you a scenario and ask you a question. Do your best to answer it.

One day, you woke up from your sleep at 3 in the morning. You don’t know why you did, except you had a really bad feeling about it. It seems like you were having a nightmare because you were sweating feverishly. You decide that the room is too stuffy, so you decide to go out onto the balcony. You live in a pretty okay apartment. It’s not the best, but it’s affordable and it’s pretty comfortable for what it’s worth. You live on the 7th floor. Upon walking outside though, you find that yourself horrified. In looking down, you find that you are the witness to a murder. You see the assailant attacking an elderly man and stabbing him with a knife. It seemed like the assailant noticed you were there, even though he was on the ground floor. He whirls around and makes eye contact with you. You don’t wait. You stumble back into your room, fearing for your life. You noticed he was shaking his hand at you only by moving his wrists. You don’t know what that means.

What was the killer doing?

One day, there was this girl. She was a relatively pretty girl. She was not outstanding in terms of looks, but she was definitely acceptable. One day, her mother died. At the funeral, she saw a strange man that she had never seen before. He was handsome and was just her type. They made eye contact, and she thought she would swoon. The man of her dream had appeared at her mother’s funeral, and she had truly fallen in love. After the funeral was over, she asked everybody who the mysterious man was. However, nobody could help her. Despite having asked everybody, nobody knew who the mysterious man was. Nobody could provide her with contact information, whether it was a phone number, address, or even email address. A few days later, the girl’s sister died. The girl had killed her.

Why did the girl kill her sister?

Answers are posted below

I thought that these tests were truly foolish as well. It is highly unlikely that riddles alone are enough to determine who is psychopathic or not. Moreover, I do not have much of an interest in psychology. It interested me to know that people were taking the tests so seriously though. Perhaps it reveals the fear that people have of the insane, and just how much they wanted to know they were safe around other people. I don’t see it as anything more than simple riddles that are easily solvable with small bits of imagination. To others, however, these were essential questions to ask.

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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.