riddles are fun to write and solve, so i thought the forum might benefit from a thread exclusively devoted to sharing 'em. here's one i wrote not so long ago: four friends pair up and link their hands to form a bridge of fateful strands. answer: Spoiler DNA. the "friends" are the nucleobases. (so that everyone can try their hand at figuring them out, try not to post answers on the thread without hiding them behind the spoiler-thing!)
I don't really write riddles, but I always like solving them. I also like gathering traditional stuff, so here's a very old one from my nursery rhymes that I remember by heart: Black I am and rest I in my bed, Men come down to break my head. Spoiler Coal. The 'bed' refers to the coalbed. Probably everyone and their grandmother knows this one really well but I like it a lot because it was my first riddle ever: in a marble hall, white as milk, lined with a skin as soft as silk, Within a fountain crystal-clear, A golden apple doth appear. No doors there are to this hold, Yet thieves break in to steal the gold. Spoiler An egg. I like hearing riddles, and they're a good exercise in trying to untangle metaphors, which in my literalness I'm not very good at.
@Fish butt i solved your first riddle incorrectly! i thought it was going to be Spoiler oysters, since i have no idea what color their shells are and they live in "oyster beds." also, you break them open to get inside. your answer makes more sense, although i don't think i knew of the term "coalbed." the second riddle Spoiler i love, since it's an expanded (and lovelier) version of bilbo's egg riddle in the hobbit. i guessed it, and i'm glad you posted it. i must have seen it before, but i don't remember. also (gestures at avatars): we're both fish butts. go figure.
i wrote this one for my kismesis: a mountain or a grain of sand, it lulls a babe, a kind of band, in countertop or under hill, around the clock tonight, we will. answer: Spoiler rock. the last line references a song, babies are rocked to sleep, it's a music genre, etc. kind of easy, but i was literally gifting him a rock at the time. he already knew the answer.
@raydelblau ha, and even with similar colour schemes! I tried to solve your riddle, but I'm very bad at biology, so I kept on thinking Spoiler a type of thread art that I know as punniken. Essentially you use four pegs that you wrap the strands around and through overlapping the strands over and under each other you can create a very long hollow rope you can use to decorate elements with.
I'm not going to post an answer, you have to figure it out. There's this dude who's going searching for tundra civets. A civet is a cat-sized furry animal that usually lives in trees. Anyways, he finds one and captures it. The sky starts raining lightly and he starts getting frantic about his search. He still can't find another. When it starts raining heavily, he gives up and puts the first one back before running off. Who is this man and what is he doing?
@Fish butt not sure how much this response needs to be under a spoiler, but meh: Spoiler WOAH. that's fucking... craft magic, that is. it looks strong, too. when googling it, however, my first result is this little fella, which can't help but remind me of brainbent's FUSB. which sorts of bees poop infinite lengths of pepto bismol yarn? the cool sorts of bees, that's who.
So my mom got me hooked on something that's kind of like riddles, but not quite. You get to ask yes or no questions to figure out the answer. We called them logic puzzles but that's not very descriptive. Would anyone be interested in something like that? I know a bunch, but I don't really know riddles. xD
Argh @BPD anon I've been trying to figure out your riddle ever since you've posted it and I can't stop thinking that this man is Spoiler some kind of biologist/zoologist who's looking for two civets to mate, but I KNOW that this is probably the complete wrong answer. But I can't think of anything else!
Another classic: what's green, hangs on the wall, and squeaks? Spoiler: answer A herring. "Herrings aren't green!" It's my herring, I can paint it whatever color I like. "And they don't hang on the wall!" I said it was my herring, right? I can put it wherever I want. "But... squeaks?" Oh, I just threw that in to make it harder.
@littlepinkbeast Boooooo Your riddle reminds me of the classic joke: 'How many surrealists does it require to change a lightbulb?' Spoiler Four. One to hold the fish, the other to play the piano.
Yes! Civets don't live in the tundra, which was a clue because if they didn't make it on they don't exist now.
Okay so an easy-ish one to start with: Romeo and Juliet are found dead on the floor in a room. There's nothing around them except for a bit a water and some broken glass. However there are no marks on them and they were not poisoned. How did they die?
@Allyssa Spoiler they're fish, yeah? and their bowl fell to the ground? i think i've heard it before, but it's a good'n.
this riddle will be a bit hard to solve, but it's one of my favorites. i used it in a DnD one-shot recently. you're faced with ten statues: a man with a bow, a man with an abacus, a man with a spear, a man with a falchion (a type of sword), a king, a courtesan, a dog, a cat, a bird, and a lute. a voice from above says something that sounds like: "you who wish to be rewarded, choose the three that keep things sorted." which three statues do you pick? answer: Spoiler the man with the abacus, the courtesan, and the man with the falchion. the man with the abacus keeps things sorted, the courtesan keeps things sordid, and the man with the falchion keeps things sworded.
