Riddle

A riddle is a statement, question or phrase with a double or hidden meaning, posed as a puzzle for someone else to solve. Riddles fall into two broad kinds: enigmas, phrased in metaphorical or allegorical language that takes real ingenuity to work out, and conundrums, which turn on a pun in the question or in the answer. The form appears across the world, attested in Finnish, Hungarian, American Indian, Chinese, Russian, Dutch and Filipino tradition among many others, and many riddle themes recur across separate cultures and continents. Folklorists describe its social function as a kind of play: a riddle unsettles the everyday boundaries a culture takes for granted, testing them for the pleasure of the challenge, before the correct answer confirms them again.