Riddledom: 101 Riddles and Their Stories

by David Astle

Overview

Why are ladies like arrows? When is a bird not a bird? What do you call a nun with a washing machine on her head? Welcome to the weird new word adventure from David Astle, plunging into the realm of riddles, chasing down and prising open 101 curious questions from around the planet. A mind-trip across time and place, Riddledom uncovers riddle relics from more than 50 cultures, delving into language and deception, sampling Pompeii walls and Twitter feeds. Readers can unravel each mini-chapter, wrestling with riddles from Wonderland or Zanzibar, Oedipus Rex or Harry Potter. French acrobats, lusty dairymaids, ancient monks—you'll meet the lot in Riddledom. Readers will roam Tasmania and Mongolia, seeking out riddles on clay tablets and Popsicle sticks.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781925266696
Publisher:	Allen & Unwin
Publication date:	05/01/2016
Sold by:	INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

David Astle has written two novels, plus five non-fiction works: Cluetopia, Puzzled, One Down, One Missing, Offbeat Australia and Riddledom. Between books, he is a crossword setter for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. His short stories have won several awards, including a trip to Beijing via Dublin as part of the James Joyce Suspended Sentence Prize in 2001.

Read an Excerpt

Riddledom

101 Riddles and their Stories

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By David Astle

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2015 David Astle
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-925266-69-6

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CHAPTER 1

What needs to breathe yet doesn't live?

Have you heard the one ...?

Unlikely, not here, not with the trip we're about to take. In one wild spin we're bound to visit 101 riddles from around the world and across time.

Think Ireland and Siberia, an ivory maze and a Chinese ambulance — anywhere a riddle might be lurking. We'll dig up tricky questions in Pompeii and Quetzaltenango, exploring the stories that lie beneath the punchlines. Shakespeare and a Japanese game show. The steppes of Mongolia and the corridors of Hogwarts — our riddle race is set to start.

Or that's the plan, assuming you're game: flying to Zanzibar and Myanmar, meeting Gulliver and Galileo, bumping into Einstein and a Scottish robot. We'll swing by the Vatican, the Philippines, the Sikh mutiny — all in the name of riddling. Everywhere we turn, every rock we flip, a riddle will be hiding.

We'll eavesdrop on coffee slaves in Brazil and hunt bear in wild Alaska. Truth being, if you think riddles are solely the stuff of schoolyards and Christmas crackers, you're about to have your head refurbished.

Even riddle — the word — is a booby-trap. Once upon a time, gold-miners relied on cast-iron riddles to separate grit from eureka. Ditto for winnowers who winnowed with steel-mesh riddles to divide the chaff from the grain. The crux is separation, arising from the German root of reiter, or sieve.

Visit any champagne estate and you might tour their riddling cellar. Again the gist is sifting, with traditional vintners rotating new bottles a few degrees each day to separate the yeast from the elixir.

But don't be fooled. None of these rituals apply to the riddles we're booked to meet. Our verb is a different branch, sprouting from rœdels in Old English, a word variously meaning opinion, or guesswork, or imagination. Take your pick. All three apply inside these covers.

As for drafting a working definition for riddle, that's a separate madness. Questions are close cousins, of course, minus the twist that's central to the riddle. Questions seek knowledge or car keys. They tend to be polite, or nosy. Riddles on the other hand are built to baffle, their kinky shapes concealing a pre-loaded answer.

Or that's my understanding for now. No doubt the riddles around the corner will only shake and stir that idea. Riddles do that anyway, catching you off-guard, making the guesser appear a dunce.

But enough chitchat. Let's head down these stairs. Careful, the stone is slippery and the door's a trick to open. Welcome to the world's own riddling cellar, a room without end. Everywhere you look the vault is stacked with bottles, each blend a riddle to sample.

If you're feeling overwhelmed, you're not alone. As a full- time puzzle-maker I know my share of word games, but this cellar takes things to another level. Riddles can be daunting, to both solvers and collectors. Hence my plan, a token bid to lend our tour some shape. To keep us from drowning I've chosen a finite rack of labels, a premium selection of myth and romance, filth and frolic, life and death, Popsicles and Wonderland.

In a spirit of bravado I've sorted the batch into varietals, from nature to novelty, from war to worship, though folklore is seldom so obedient. You'll notice some labels will overlap with others, while just as many riddles laugh at their pigeonholes. Like this riddle, our first:

What needs to breathe yet doesn't live?

That's how we roll in Riddledom, each chapter presenting its own curly question to see if you can snare the answer before the tippling's done.

In essence, that's our challenge now. With one vast room to roam, let's rest our hands on 101 small mysteries — the dry wit of Greece, the sparkle of Finland — and turn each bottle like so many doorknobs, opening to the universe awaiting on the other side. We do this right and every riddle will live and breathe.

Yes, you guessed it. Wine is the answer to Riddle 1, a potion that needs to breathe before it can animate the senses. Take a sip, if you like. The Dutch courage will do you good, a dash of medicine to help prepare for our next 100. Though I should warn you — this opener is a teaser. Upcoming riddles have far greater complexity, more than a few destined to unmoor your mind.

So let's begin. Let's turn and open, sample and solve, illuminate what marvels lie behind each 'dark saying', to quote the Shorter Oxford. Rather than expend precious oxygen trying to define riddles, or wonder why their trickery pervades every corner of the planet, I say we go riddling.

CHAPTER 2

When is a boy not a boy?

Milk can turn without moving. Parrots speak in polysyllables. You only need two fingers to make a Venetian blind.

I learnt these facts when riddling as a kid. Every week, every car trip, every stretch of downtime, I discovered how boiled eggs are tough to beat, while icicles are eavesdroppers.

My principal text was canary in colour, a 1959 hardback from New York City published by Platt & Munck. A lifetime later, the book's still with me, a template for the volume in your hands.

Over the years the canary cover softened to margarine, but nothing else has changed. The gags are just as dusty. Quaint line drawings by George L. Carlson, the book's compiler, struggle to aerate the type, the riddles numbered like so many commandments down the page, from 1 to 1001. Yes, that was the title: 1001 Riddles.

Perhaps the tally rings a bell. It should, since we're about to drown in 101 mind benders, or 99 from this point onward. The echo's no fluke. Riddledom is my bid to square an old debt. If not for Messrs Platt & Munck, I swear my brain would never be so devious.

The obvious homage was to modernise the relic, to build a cold list of 1001 substitute riddles. But why take a trodden path? Libraries and bookstores are swamped by wacky collections, each volume jostling to be the next Platt & Munck. The universe, I figured, didn't need another chew-chew train.

Whatever tack I took, my job was simplified by the passion the boyhood book had infused. Or, quoting Riddle 2 from that same yellow bible:

When is a boy not a boy?

In theory the riddle invites several answers. When he's a man, say. When he's dreaming or acting, possibly. When he's not feeling himself. Before I tell you the actual solution, a few more words about that riddle addiction.

Growing up I adored the duplicity of English, how a blind carpenter picked up his hammer and saw. How MTGG was a hungry horse, or the tastiest dog was a melon-collie. Sure, the puns are punishing now, but back in the day, late primary school, this here joke-junkie was agog in a stream of homophones and double meanings.

Now and then my parents despaired. Mum feared she'd sneezed too hard while I was in her womb, dislodging some vital helix in my DNA. For his part, Dad could never fathom how a sea captain with a love of carpentry had sired a pun- geek. Worse, a kid who couldn't even spackle without leaving streaks.

I argued back, of course. Those long car trips seemed ready made for philosophical disputes. Riddles, I told them, could be practical. Survival in the desert was guaranteed so long as you could drink your watch's spring and eat the soles on your feet. Pretty soon the car returned to silence, my parents staring at the road while their make-believe scholar resumed his studies.

Looking back, I was, accidentally, kind of right. Riddles can be practical. Like few other diversions, they spur your brain to build outrageous connections. If I had any major beef among the 1001 in Carlson's collection, it would be Riddle 82:

What goes up but never down? Your age

Bunkum, in my books. You'll never reverse the calendar, or turn back the clock, but you can continue to stretch the imagination, using riddles to keep the mind elastic. Thanks to 1001 crafty questions, I know that jackets and jalopies are both worn out. Or that pages are attached to both queens and books. I'm here to report that spells, codes and mustangs can each be broken, while Pisces and Libra depend on scales. I'm not saying the links are hilarious, but the pretzel logic reboots the neurons, diverts your focus in fresh directions, attunes the art of lateral thinking. Or, to quote Riddle 781:

What is the difference between an engineer and a school teacher?

Engineers engineer, of course. They build bridges or vacuum cleaners, leaving teachers to bestow the alphabet, explain fractions, tell the class the capital of Peru or how photosynthesis works. Said more wittily:

One minds the train, the other trains the mind.

A cute gimmick for an answer, but never neglect the power of riddling to teach, or the joy of novel language to engineer. The cunning needed to reach a crooked answer requires a special brand of genius in a young mind — or an old mind kept young by riddles.

Somehow I sensed that even as a boy, back when I wasn't a boy, arguing the toss with my parents. Have you solved our riddle yet? It's thorny, though I murmured the answer a few paragraphs earlier, recalling the rapture I felt on the road, the holy book spread across my lap. Check back and you'll see I was agog, versus a boy: the answer you've been seeking.

Years on, of course, that agogness hasn't quit. The slightest sleight-of-language has my system humming. Old or new, riddles have the power to rock the way you think. Stick with me and you'll feel the same rush, as we speed headlong into the mysteries of inner space.

CHAPTER 3

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Somewhere in the course of evolution, Gallus gallus found the gumption to brave a road. The big question is: why?

The daredevil's first written mention appeared in a literary magazine called The Knickerbocker back in 1847. As the name suggests, the monthly emerged out of New York, where knickerbocker identifies a Manhattan elitist, the word echoing the Dutch aristocracy that once called that city home.

The man to dream up the Knickerbocker name was the satirist Washington Irving. His best-known character was Rip Van Winkle, or maybe the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

Irving was born in the week America shook off British rule, back in 1783. He grew up in Manhattan, amid the merchant class, and in his late teens he turned his hand to literature. His first major work was a lampoon in 1809, entitled A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. Note how the so-called author was in italics, too, since Knickerbocker was part of the fiction. An elaborate part, where Irving pretended the Dutch historian was real — and missing.

The ruse was brilliant. Irving, as the real author, placed ads in the New York press seeking information on the spurious author, last seen wandering the city's streets. An early example of viral marketing, the hoax ensured strong sales for the book, plus the lasting popularity of Knickerbocker, the name. Indeed, the New York Knicks is the only basketball team in the world named after a fake Dutch intellectual, while The Knickerbocker magazine, launched in 1833, became a nest of fine literary talents, hiring the likes of Irving himself.

Handy details when it comes to appreciating our celebrity chicken. The early 1800s was a time of American pride and literary airs. The Brits were gone, replaced by profiteers. Cities rose in height and population. The west was unlocked, claiming new ground for cotton and wheat, beef and dairy. Rail networks webbed the map, in league with a growing crisscross of roads.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Riddledom by David Astle. Copyright © 2015 David Astle. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

1 What needs to breathe yet doesn't live?,
2 When is a boy not a boy?,
Birds & Bees,
3 Why did the chicken cross the road?,
4 Why is a raven like a writing desk?,
5 Riddle me, riddle me, rot-tot-tote!,
6 Dvi lentutes, dvi geldutes, ylos kotas, katile dugnas ...,
7 I know the imazi ihobe,
8 A man that was not a man hit a bird that was not a bird ...,
9 M'aan cwii tsan'iieen jeen chian'iie,
10 An old woman is made to break wind by an angry old man,
11 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII],
12 Eu sou mineiro, não bule comigo não ...,
Lust & Love,
13 I gave my love a cherry that had no stone,
14 Ciò che il ghiaccio può fare fuoco?,
15 Hyse cwom gangan pœr he hie wise stondan ...,
16 Out of the eater, something to eat. Out of the strong, something sweet.,
17 Waq law pampapi huq machucha runtunta champayanankama suqurn,
18 Why are ladies like arrows?,
19 Mulier ferebat filium simile sui ...,
20 Kyamiso-ru to kakete enpitsu to toku. Sono kokoro wa?,
21 Eine getötet keiner, aber immer noch getötet zwölf,
22 Seven exit and nine enter, two pour and one drinks,
Life & Death,
23 A fire broke out in a prison,
24 Who is the great one that glides o'er the earth, and swallows both waters and woods?,
25 Why is a turnpike like a dead dog's tail?,
26 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII],
27 Was ist ein Kannibale, der seinen Vater und seine Mutter gegessen hat?,
28 What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon ...,
29 ... and three feet in the evening?,
30 Why did the girl kill her sister?,
Anti-riddles,
31 What's red and bad for your teeth?,
32 Why can't you tell secrets to a cornfield?,
33 Knock, knock!,
34 I turn polar bears white and will make you cry ...,
35 Which came first, the chicken or the egg?,
36 There are five houses painted five different colours,
37 The cock crew, the sky was blue ...,
38 What lake can fly?,
Letters & Numbers,
39 As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives ...,
40 One,
41 Aso ko sa pantalan, lumukso ng pitong balon, umulit ng pitong gubat, bago nagtanaw dagat,
42 Red nuts and gin,
43 Cry, foe! Run amok! Fa awry! My wand won't tolerate this nonsense.,
44 Mostro son io più strano è più difforme ...,
45 Which is easier to spell, fiddle-de-dee or fiddle-de-dum?,
46 My first is in riddle, but not in little ...,
47 Perhaps the solvers are inclined to hiss ...,
48 The century's wonder — a raree-show ...,
49 'Twas whispered in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell ...,
50 What's the difference between a dasher and a haberdasher?,
51 101 × 5,
Lost & Found,
52 In the fields grazeth a calf whose body changeth hue thrice in the space of each day,
53 Sounds like where a robin or eagle might keep their money,
54 Basin Street Banquet,
55 In the morn, when I rise, I open my eyes ...,
56 Se pareba boves, alba pratalia araba,
57 Why should the Captain of a vessel going to Woolnorth leave here with a good appetite?,
58 I'm the sweetest of sounds in Orchestra heard ...,
59 Fifty is my first, nothing is my second ...,
60 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII],
War & Peace,
61 Let us look at it quite closely, 'tis a very ugly word ...,
62 Truly he'll see war,
63 E rau lewe rua ndau vala tiko ng aka senga ni mundu ...,
64 ¿Por qué verdaderamente ganó Rigoberta el premio Nobel?,
65 Pana visu vingi lakini mpini mmoja tu,
66 Why is the mother weak?,
67 Which do you prefer: the death of the moon, or the death of a banana tree?,
68 You cannot walk without me, yet you grease your body and forget me ...,
69 Fin hrazef vitishera sorfoon?,
70 lu/gu/sEn/soi/an bE/si/tu/nEn,
71 Two calves and an ape, they made their escape ...,
72 Two an' two is four, an' four an' five is nine ...,
73 What government measure is like nitro-muriatic acid?,
Famous & Forgettable,
74 How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizza?,
75 Tarda, gradu lento, specioso praedita dorso ...,
76 Why is the latest Cole's Funny Picture Book like the earliest Cole's Funny Picture Book?,
77 When is Henderson Africanus like Sir Graham Berry's bandy leg?,
78 What's black, white and read all over?,
79 What do you call a nun with a washing machine on her head?,
80 Why are some persons who do not like London milk like York thieves?,
81 Why is Blondin like a prizefighter?,
82 Enfant de l'Art, Enfant de la Nature ...,
83 Because I am by nature blind, I wisely choose to walk behind ...,
Body & Soul,
84 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII],
85 It comes out after fanfare; it opens its white umbrella because it is proud of its royal birth,
86 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII],
87 Primum, mi Lovatelle, cum bibissem ...,
88 There was a she-mule in my house; I opened the door and she became a heifer,
89 When God by flood was punishing vile sin ...,
90 I see at a distance through the moor ...,
Enigma Variations,
91 Kolmasti päivässä päälleen pukee ...,
92 Madam, I take the liberty of sending the servant whom I mentioned the other day ...,
93 'Tis a true Picture of the Man ...,
94 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII],
95 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII],
96 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII],
97 é gál-tak –a,
98 ##ERE DO #OU F##D SOU# GRAP#S?,
99 What do you call a shout that has a pixel?,
100 In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?,
101 [Smell of burning hair],
Postlude,
Acknowledgements,
Selected bibliography,

Editorial Reviews

"The Sergeant Pepper of cryptic crosswords—a complete mind fuck."  —Geoffrey Rush, actor, on David Astle

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