What is riddles' origin and relevance?The Sphinx of Thebes, the monster that used the guard the temple, used to ask two famous riddles to anyone who sought entrance to the City: i) What is the creature that at first rests on four legs, then two in the middle of its life, and then four as its life approaches an end, and the more legs it rests on the weaker it is?; ii) Who are the two sisters, the first of which gives birth to the second, who, in turn, sets the first alive? Oedipus has gone down in historical records as the first person to have cracked both riddles as follows : i) man; and ii) day and night.
Ancient Greeks used to poll the Sphinx when in doubt. She, wise and yet perfidiosuly impalpable, always knew the truth and yet would only hint at it, without giving it away, aiming to confuse its audience. Her behaviour typified the ancient Greeks attitude to knowledge, which they viewed as a highly competitive process, often the byproduct of a process of self-discovery and doubt. More recently, Puccini's Turandot would ask her courters three riddles, which they all failed to answer, for which they paid with their lives. Only the unknown Prince Calaf woulc guess that "the creature that was sculpted with ice outside and fire inside" was indeed Turandot. More prosaically, universities often use riddles in entrance exams and exams, while many employers ask riddles in job interviews.This is the first reason to care about them. Secondly, riddles reveal many epistemological and game theoritic concepts. For instace, the "riddle of the three doors" unveils the principle of Bayesian probabilities; "the riddle of the wolves" illustrates the concept of a perfect equilibriumin game theory. The "riddle of the pyrates" shows you how to apply backwards induction. |
My favourite riddles I hope you will enjoy these riddles. Please do not give up if you cannot solve them at first; persevere, relax to let the solution come to you! You can email me at sant0481@yahoo.com if you want to get the solutions or would like to tell me about some riddles you know that I can add to my list:
1. The Sphinx of Thebes and the three doors; 2. Extracting the truth from a borne liar; 3. Measuring time with a crazy rope; 4. Spot the outlier with a basic scale; 5. Polling twenty two couples at a party; 6. Investigating suicides at the City of Wolves; 7. Outsmarting the Pirates; 8. Taking the con out of Chinese demography; 9. Should you be the first mover at a board game? 10. Swapping envelopes; 11. The winner takes it all; 12. How many tokens should you buy before a price increase; 13. Guess the number; 14. The hundred prisoners (hardest riddle I know) |