“Okay… so I don’t remember where I heard this riddle I must have been extremely young. But I remember it very vividly because I thought it was so cool and I don’t know what it’s called but I remember how it goes. So a Sphinx… when you’re walking down a path and you’re just trying to keep walking but a Sphinx is in your way and so…in order to get past the Sphinx the Sphinx will never let you pass and I think it kills you if you don’t answer the riddle correctly… but the only way to pass is to answer a riddle correctly and this is the riddle the Sphinx asks, ‘what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs during the day, and three legs in the evening’ and nobody ever gets it right so the Sphinx always kills them or doesn’t let them pass, I don’t remember if they kill them or don’t let them pass but the correct answer is a person like a human being because when you’re a baby you crawl on four legs and when you are an adult, you walk on two, and when you’re an old man, you walk on two and your third is a cane and that’s how the Sphinx gets ya”
This is a fairly common folktale if one had studied greek legends. what I enjoy about this folklore is that it’s both a story. A folktale about a Sphinx that kills people, but it’s also a riddle as well. There is a riddle within the story. It’s very Shakespearean in that sense.