- The World of Fantasy

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- Editor's note

Looking at Riddle Formation

Contributors: Brendan (Creator/Editor), Mark L Chance (Corrections and Technical Language), [email protected] (Letter Riddles), Darla Baker (Supplier of the 'Nothing' Riddle)

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RIDDLES ARE SOMETHING that I personally do not find difficult to create although I am aware that many other people have difficulty in creating riddles and other word tricks for old sages or talking door's to confound PC's. In this article I will outline the techniques that I use for such formation. If you are not familiar with the terms used, don't fret! many are things that you probably already know but have been given long names and were only used in this article for clarity.

Start With The Answer

Firstly I find riddles much easier to make if you first start with the answer. Choose something appropriate to the situation, for example if you are just a few feet away from total divine power and the answer to the man at the gates of heaven's riddle is something like 'potatoe' then it kind of destroys the moment! For most of the examples in this article I will demonstrate techniques with the answer 'dark'.

The Techniques.

Most riddles I find use certain literary techniques to trick the listener, below is a list and applications of the ones that I found.

Semantic Field: A good start is to find a group of words which are associated with your answer. For the example 'dark' we could extract, black, blackness, void, fear, light, evil, confusion, veiled, blind, shadow. These words can then be used within the riddle to hint at the answer.

Metaphor and Simlie: Many riddles use metaphor to mislead and distract the listener from the real meaning. Metaphor is comparing the solution of the riddle with something else which is unrelated, for example 'I snuff the day' compares the darkness to a 'candle snuffer'. Simlie is even more common than metaphor, when a direct comparison is used. How many times have you seen phrases like 'cold as ice' and 'hard as stone'. To find a suitable comparison, think of some of the properties found within your answer's semantic field and choose one to compare. For my example of 'dark' I could pick out it's blackness and say something like, 'as black as coal' or for 'void' I could say 'as empty as space'.

Metonymy: Similar to metaphor it is the substituting of the word for something which it is a part of, or something which is a part of it. Some examples are 'smokes' for cigarettes and 'the law' for the police, A lesser constituent of dark could be 'shadow' and a greater constituent could be 'void' so substituting them instead of the answer would give something like, 'I am shadow, I am void'.

Synonym: This being different word or phrase of similar meaning (very few words, if any, have exactly the same meaning in every context). Synonyms of dark could be 'without light', or 'blackness,' These can be used in the riddle to hint at the solution. Thesaurus are full of synonyms and most word processors will have them.

Rhyme: I know that most riddles rhyme as a whole but there are other ways in which you could use rhyme to confound by including a word that rhymes with the answer. This little used technique can be used to great effect. For example if I said 'I am similar to lark' for our example of 'dark', most people think about the bird rather than the word itself thus throwing even especially clever players off the scent.

Onomatopoeia: A technique that is likely little used, involves making the words sound like the noun they are describing, a difficult one to apply to 'dark' since dark has no noise, but for example if your chosen answer was 'a snake' then you could lengthen any 's' sounds when reading the riddle out to sound like 'hissing'.

Literal Thinking: We all should know this one, remember the old 'what was the drivers name' question, the answer of course being 'What'. (it was a statement not a question.) This technique often works well with clich�s (well known and overused phrases.) Taking our example of dark and altering it a bit, 'I am as black as coal, what am I?' the answer being 'coal'. This works well because it is a clich�, the following wouldn't work so well, 'I am as black as dark, what am I?' the answer being 'dark', because it seems like an odd thing to say. The last phrase is not a well known clich� and so arouses suspicion as to why you chose those words, making the literal thinking a bit too obvious for most.

Personification: By describing the word in question with 'human' characteristics you can imply the answer but also add another dimension to what the listener imagines the answer to be. Better demonstrated by an example, 'I shy away from my foe, the sun', not literally possible of course but it conjures images of a dark warrior being defeated by the sun. A technique which is used an awful lot in riddles, (the whole 'what am I?' thing is through the personification of the answer.) Which brings us nicely onto,

Opposites: Another way to add a clue as to what the answer might be without actually telling them straight. Also if you make the entire riddle so that all clues point to the opposite of the answer then include a line that implies that the opposite to your conclusion is your answer then it adds another stage to the solving process. For example if I were to use the opposite of 'dark' which is 'light' then the riddle could go something like this. 'Of the suns rays, I am born, I live in beacons and guide many through storms, yet it is not with me that your answer lies, it is my foe the one I despise.' The answer of course being 'darkness'.

Cliche and collocation: The Cliche is a piece of language that has lost it's impact through overuse such as the old 'why did the chicken' joke. They are usually looked down upon in most creative writing, but in riddles they are abundant and very useful because of their familiarity. Many riddles include incomplete cliches with the missing word being the answer, and simply becasue it is a cliche does not mean it has to be obvious. For example, take a look at the following (very well written,) riddle quoted by 'Polaris.'

The answer is 'nothing'. This becomes obvious when we consider each of the questions individually, man loves nothing more than life, man fears nothing more than death, the poor have nothing whilst the rich have everything (and so require nothing.) Because 'nothing' is so often used in such phrases it becomes possible to complete the sentence by guessing at the missing word. There is a site on the web that deal with archiving riddles (Look at "Related Sites".).

Entering the example answer 'dark' into the search box, it came back with many results, here is a selection of the most appropriate (i.e. the most commonly understood ones), for those that have never heard of the clich? I have included what they mean in the brackets. Note that when creating you own riddles be sure to use riddles that you and you players will likely know.

dark horse (a secretive person)
a shot in the dark (a wild guess)
to keep someone in the dark (to not let someone know about something)

One way to integrate cliches into riddles is to replace the answer with a pronoun such as 'me' or 'I' (if you would like to personify the answer,) or 'it'. for example:

Another way is like the 'nothing' riddle above where it asks questions using the Cliche as a clue. for example

A collocation is similar to a cliche but usually includes only two words that just seem to go together well. For example 'Big Mac', 'Compact Disk', these can be used in similar ways as cliches, by substituting the answer with a pronoun or making it into a question.

The techniques above work for both written and spoken riddles, here is a couple more that would work best for written (i.e. on a player handout).

Acrostic. Perhaps you remember being asked to write a poem by a junior school teacher where each of the first letters of each line spelt out a word. Really hints must be given within the poem to suggest this otherwise it's unlikely PC's would ever think of looking. An example for dark is below,

You can see the word 'dark' spelt out along the side fairly plainly, although I emphasised them with capital letters, you can make them as plain or as subtle as you like with boldening, capitals or other forms of highlighting.

Anagram: Taking the letters of a word and jumbling them up to make new words, anagrams make great riddle clues. It can be difficult, and sometimes impossible to make a new word from your clue (as is the case with 'dark') especially if the answer is few in letters. (For more anagrams see related websites)

If you plan to use anagrams it may be worth extending the answer into a phrase so as to gain gain better results when using the generator. Changing 'dark' to 'confusion' I gained 'focus in on' as an anagram. Inserting it into the riddle may once again need some kind of a clue that it is an anagram, in this case the second line gives such a clue. To help disguise the the rather strange sounding line 'focus in on' I have placed it at the end of the verse. Many poems place their 'cryptic' lines at the end to leave the reader with something to think about and so it seems less out of place. (Dulci est Decorum est...)

I'm sure you could think of much better ones given time but hopefully you have the general idea.

Making the riddle sound good

It is a good idea to make the riddle sound catchy, no one will remember a riddle like 'I am similar to a lark, I'm blackness'. It just doesn't stick in the memory, so once you have all the clever bit sorted out, you can dress it up a bit. More literary techniques can help make a truly memorable riddle.

Alliteration, Assonance and Consonance: Alliteration and assonance is when sounds are repeated in subsequent words, usually most noticable with first letters of words. This does actually help stick in peoples memories and can provide a certain element of light heartedness to the riddle as well as adding emphasis as readers are forced to slow down and consider the points in more depth (like 'reading' a toungue twister). 'Like a lark, I am as black as black'. Consonance is when words have the same consonants but different vowels, the effect is similar to rhyme. 'Black as black but like a lark, The shrouding sheet for those that lurk.'

Parallel Phrasing: Where the words are repeated at intervals. 'I'm like a lark, I'm as black as black'

Balanced sentences: Giving each sentence or clause a similar length and amount of syllables, this can allow for 'well rounded' and cohesive riddles. The above is an example is a balanced sentence whereas 'I am similar to a lark, I'm blackness' is not balanced.

Rhyme: Can be difficult to integrate into your riddle but not impossible and can make it really worthwhile. The 'light' example above is a good example of this.

Getting Sentences To Fit

If you have trouble getting your riddle to fit into verses or using the above techniques then try firstly altering the semantics (word order). Many sentences can be written in more than one way and often the 'non standard' word order sounds the most archaic (see the third line of the example below).

Without going into too much detail, try to split the sentence into chunks where the words are related ('of good', 'a fighter') then rearrange them. If they make sense then new sentence is born. Note: be careful that the meaning is still appropriate as this may change with the altered order.

If the sentence length is the problem then extensive elipsis (the removing of 'non-essential' words), can help. It is not neccessarily long sentences that convey a 'medieval' feel, after all, medieval folk were supposed to be largely illiterate...You may be surprised at how much in a sentence can be omitted. For example the above sentence without ellipsis should actually say,

The best way to cut down a sentence, again without going into a lot of detail, would be to just use common sense. Ask yourself, 'What have I allready established earlier or what will I establish later in the riddle? Do I need to state it again in this line?Am I stating the obvious?' and most importantly 'Would meaning be lost if I missed out that word?' Of course it may be that your sentence is too long. The good news is that people often write with out even knowing they are missing words out, simply identifying what is missing and adding them in should make the sentence longer. Below is what I believe to be a fairly typical example of what sombody would state, and comparing this to the above demonstrates just how much we omit.

You should find that getting a sentence to fit into accrostics, parallel phrasing, rhymes and others a whole lot easier using ellipsis and altering semantics.

Specific Types of Riddle

Certain types of words for answers require different ways of thinking for the 'solver'. An interesting example of the answer changing the thinking process is with 'letter riddles' with the answer being a letter of the alphabet and all the clues imply that the answer lies with the object being described rather than the word itself. An example for the letter 'e' is below

and this one for the letter 'v'

The two examples above rely largely on cliche and collocations of a certain type, specifically those that include or have had a preposition somewhere in the sentence. Ok, ok don't panic, a preposition is a word that states location relative to something else. Examples of common preposistions are

in, on, under, within, over, from, to, outside, inside, with, at, through.

The reason why the above riddles don't seem to have many of these words is because of elipsis (the ommiting of 'unneccesary' words.) Look at the first verse. The preposition 'At' can be placed at the start of the first three lines, and as the second word in the forth line, but the author of the riddle has decided that 'at' was an unneccessary word and missed it out so that the lines were more balanced in length, (as well a neat example of 'parallel phrasing'.)

Finally

Finally after you have created your riddle, test it on someone. Even if you think that it is blindingly obvious what the answer is (and you would because you know it!) still test it out because it is surprising how differently people think. There is nothing more disheartening than to create a riddle and then to see your party solve it in seconds or spend hours and hours puzzling over it until you have to give them the answer yourself.

The End.

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