Enigmas are posed as problems using metaphorical, allegorical, or associational language that require creativity and experience to answer. For example: “If the sun sets, a flower-garden; but if you look at it after dawn, an empty garden. What is it?” (Answer: the sky. )[1] X Research source Conundrums are posed as questions that incorporate puns in the question, the answer, or both. For example: “What flowers can be found between the nose and chin?” (Answer: Tulips/”Two lips”)[2] X Research source
For example, a popular riddle from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit goes: “Thirty white horses on a red hill, / First they champ, / Then they stamp, / Then they stand still. ”[3] X Research source This riddle uses familiar ideas (horses, hills) to figuratively express the answer (in this case, “teeth. ”)
Red herrings are a common form of misdirection through association, as seen in this riddle: “A green man lives in the green house. A blue man lives in the blue house. A red man lives in the red house. Who lives in the white house?” The immediate answer, given the pattern set up, would be “a white man,” but the “White House” is a red herring: the President of the United States lives in the White House! A traditional African riddle asks: “How do you eat an elephant?” (Answer: one bite at a time. ) This riddle is a good example of an answer being hidden in plain sight. Other “riddles” are not true riddles at all. For example, this traditional Yiddish riddle asks: “What hangs on a wall, is green, wet, and whistles?” The answer is “a herring” because you can hang a herring on a wall and paint a herring green. If the herring has been freshly painted, it is wet. The joke is that it really doesn’t whistle – there’s intentionally no solution to this riddle. [4] X Research source
Puzzle games such as Tetris, as well as traditional jigsaw puzzles, require you to look at a situation in multiple ways to figure out the best solution. This process transfers well into solving riddles, too. Specific types of puzzles and games are best at developing specific types of skills. Though, if you do a lot of crossword puzzles, you’ll probably get very good at crossword puzzles, but you may not see equivalent gains in other areas. It’s helpful to play a variety of games instead of focusing on only one type. [7] X Research source
Rephrasing ideas into your own words may also help you develop linguistic flexibility and improve memory. It’s easier to remember ideas when you’ve taken the time to paraphrase them, because your brain has had to work to structure the ideas so that it understands them.
For example, a famous enigma in Sophocles’ play Oedipus the King asks, “What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening?” The answer is “a person”: a baby crawls when it is young (morning), walks upright when it is an adult (noon), and has to use a cane when it is old (evening). [10] X Research source
What has four feet? Many animals have four feet, so that’s a possible answer. Tables and chairs also have four feet, and they’re common things too, so keep those in mind. What has two feet? People seem an obvious choice here, since humans are familiar and they have two feet. Chairs and tables don’t have two feet, so they’re probably not the answer. What has three feet? This is the tricky part. Animals don’t usually have three feet unless one has been taken away. However, if the animal started with four feet and then went to two feet, it wouldn’t re-grow a third foot. That means that we’re probably looking at the third foot as a kind of tool: something that has been added. What uses tools? A person is the most familiar answer, so this might be the target.
This might mean that it goes because something else makes it go (like a car), so don’t make up your mind just yet. Maintaining an open mind is crucial for solving riddles.
Because the riddle begins in the morning and ends in the evening, it seems likely that the riddle is asking about something that happens across the progress of time from beginning to end. Be careful to avoid over-literal thinking when considering riddles. They are almost always figurative; “noon” might not mean “12:00 PM” so much as the “middle” of something.
Chairs and tables can’t “go” on their own feet. That makes them unlikely solutions. A person has multiple feet, they can “add” more feet by using tools like canes and crutches, and they can “go” somewhere on their feet. Even if you don’t quite know how the feet work together with time yet, “person” seems like a solid solution.
Although both enigmas and conundrums often ask the riddle in the form of a question, enigmas are often more complex problems, while conundrums may ask a simple question.
While breaking down a riddle into parts and considering multiple possible solutions may seem awkward or clunky at first, it will get much faster and easier with practice.
For example, this riddle asks: “What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?” (Answer: a towel. ) Even though the actions seem contradictory, a towel does dry things and get wet as it dries those things.
For example, this riddle asks: “What has golden hair and stands in the corner?” The answer is a broom: the “golden hair” is the yellow straw of a traditional straw broom, and it “stands” in the corner when it isn’t being used.
The goal of a trick riddle is to get you to give the most “obvious” (and also usually most explicit) answer. For example, there are several answers to this riddle: “What four-letter word ending in K means ‘intercourse’?” In order to give the “right” answer (“talk”), you must look past the most common assumptions and think more flexibly.
