Questions tagged [riddle]

What is a riddle?

A riddle gives indirect clues towards the identity of an unnamed object or concept, often presented in the form of a poem. The goal of any riddle is to figure out what it is describing. A riddle generally uses metaphors and allegories to conceal the answer.

What makes a good riddle?

• Riddles must be based on calculation and interpretation and not rely on assumption. The answer must be unique and clearly fit all the given clues.
• Riddles must contain enough information and have an unambiguous, clearly correct answer.
• Riddles should be clever and creative. Riddles that are too easy or unimaginative are not fun to solve.
• Users can receive feedback on their riddles by posting them to The Riddle Sandbox before posting to the main site.

How should I try to solve a riddle?

• Analyze the riddle line by line. Note words or sentences that seem out of place.
• Keep a list of possibilities that fit the description the riddle provides and eliminate possible options.

How should I answer the question once I have the solution to the riddle?

• Make sure your solution fully fits the description in the riddle.
• Answer the riddle fully, and provide a detailed explanation. Provide a line-by-line analysis to justify your solution.
• Use spoilers for content that directly relates to the answer. Use plain text in-between spoilers to explain what the reader is to expect. (Spoilers hide part of a post by placing >! at the beginning of a line.)

How should I format my post to look like a riddle?

• Riddles are often presented as quotes, and we often see users struggling with line breaks, causing all lines to be concatenated. Start each line with a > and end with two spaces, like this (the underscores indicate the trailing spaces):

  > Roses are red__
  > Violets are blue__
  > Riddles are nice__
  > But I don't have a clue.
  

This renders as follows:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Riddles are nice
But I don't have a clue.