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It is very hard to discuss American short stories, poetry, and more generally, literature, without mentioning Edgar Allan Poe. He was born in 1809 and lived to be a great author, editor, and poet. He only made it to the age of 40 and he lived during a slow and grim period for publishing in America, but he still managed to become well-known and make all of the money he needed solely off of his writings. This was impressive because he was the first well-known American to do this. People frequently give credit him with the accomplishment of starting the detective genre of fiction. In a few of his short stories his characters had to solve a set of riddles and puzzles in order to solve whatever mystery was at hand. Not only did he start this field but his writings also have contributed to the actual field of cryptology. His various writings have been inspiring to several subsequent writers in the fields of literature in general, science fiction, and strangely enough, cosmology. One fact that is lesser known about Edgar Allan Poe is that he was addicted to riddles. Edgar Allan Poe believed that when it came to all things riddles he was the authority; he thought that nobody else could match his wit with regards to riddles and ciphers. One example of his lack of modesty is that he commented on and liked the fact that his name "Edgar Poe" was an anagram for "A God peer." He was so confident that he was smarter than most everybody else that he actually refused to acknowledge when other people could match his own abilities at times. Aside from his vanity, riddles also found their way into Poe's life through his short stories and poetry. He used them in his works for several reasons. As formerly mentioned, he authored some short stories that were very similar to what we now know as detective fiction. In these short stories riddles are used to create obstacles for the main character and keep the story moving to the ending. The protagonist of the story answers riddle after riddle until they arrive to the final riddle of the story leading them to a hidden 'treasure'. One of the primary forms of riddles that he includes in his stories is ciphers, or encoded messages. Poe's inclusion of them in his own stories helped make them popular in all art forms practiced in America. Another place where you can see a lot of his riddles is his poetry. His poetry used riddles to conceal identities of people and add meaning to objects. In one of the magazines that Poe was editor of at one point, Graham's magazine, he put a cryptogram in the August edition in 1941 that had been sent to him by his friend. Poe had had some trouble solving this cryptogram himself, calling it trifling. For this reason he thought no one who would read the magazine would be able to solve the cryptogram, so he said anyone who could would get a free year's subscription. To Poe's surprise, one of the people who had subscribed to the magazine quickly sent in their solution to the riddle. He found that this man's solution was correct and somehow managed to trick himself into believing that the man had cheated to achieve the answer (even though it is obvious that this wasn't possible). The man confronted Poe through the mail and eventually Poe published the man's solution to the riddle in the December edition of the magazine that same year, but he never gave the man a free year's subscription. Edgar Allan Poe is a great literary mind and one of the most well-known and studied poets ever. He has become more popular with time and has inscribed his name into history. For more information about Edgar Allan Poe visit his Wikipedia page. For some good riddles of your own visit Good Riddles Now's good riddles and answers section.
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