What makes a riddle? Every day we hear people calling things riddles in the media, but they don't mention anything about chickens crossing roads. We also associate them with questions that involve puns: What kind of bears don't have teeth? Gummy bears. But the final The most technical definition of a riddle is any statement or question that has several meanings and demands an answer. Even though this is the most technical definition of the term it doesn't make it any more correct than the other uses, as they are all socially acceptable. This broad use of the term is somewhat new and traditionally the word riddles has referred to a more specific brand of poetry. Like all poetry, riddles have been enjoyed for thousands of years. They go back to before the time of the Greeks and the writing of the Bible. Both the literature of the Greeks and the contents of the bible contain fairly advanced riddles. This dates them as far back as 1,000 BC or so. The one that is most often claimed to be the oldest, "As I Was Going To St. Ives", is actually based on a math problem written in 1,650 BC. But this problem was not originally meant to be a riddle but was later put into riddle form. They we're used to provide entertainment like they still are today, but they were also used to explain large concepts. Aristotle actually described them as being important to rhetoric because they can explain concepts in a way that could not be directly explained. Following the Greek era, the next era to embrace riddles largely was the Anglo-Saxon time period. In this time period the meaning of what a riddle was actually seemed to lose substance. During this time they were almost limited to only those that could potentially end with the phrase "What am I?" A lot of the literature of this time was destroyed but enough remains for us to deduce that the Anglo-Saxons loved them. The most popular and notable source of riddles from this time is the Exeter book. The book contains 94 of them from the middle of the Anglo-Saxon era, capturing the essence of how they lived and entertained themselves. They used them almost solely for entertainment, in contrast to the Greeks who also saw them as important literary devices. From this era on until the modern era, riddles were primarily in the form that ended with what am I. Words lose and gain meaning over time, the word riddles happened to gain meaning recently. For thousands of years the term has been associated with next to impossible questions and statements giving it the connotation of insurmountable problems. This definition makes it the perfect word to describe the largest problems in the world. The fact that punny questions are included in the definition is actually technically correct, because they do have several or veiled meanings. They have become riddles even though they haven't always been seen in that way. No matter what you call a riddle they are fun and interesting bits of logic. With all of the confusion about riddles we can only deduce one fact: the meaning of riddles is a never the same. For some great examples of riddles visit Good Riddles Now's main riddles page.
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