Riddle

A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and conundra, which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer.

Archer Taylor says that "we can probably say that riddling is a universal art" and cites riddles from hundreds of different cultures including Finnish, Hungarian, American Indian, Chinese, Russian, Dutch and Filipino sources amongst many others. Hamnett analyzes African riddling from an anthropological viewpoint.

Definitions

Defining riddles precisely is hard and has attracted a fair amount of scholarly debate. One definition famous in Anglophone scholarship is that of Alan Dundes and Robert A. Georges: 'a riddle is a traditional verbal expression which contains one or more descriptive elements, a pair of which may be in opposition; the referent of the elements is to be guessed'. In some traditions and contexts, riddles may overlap with proverbs. Thus 'Nothing hurts it, but it groans all the time' can be deployed as a proverb (when its referent is a hypocrite) or as a riddle (when its referent is a pig).

Riddles (Star Trek: Voyager)

"Riddles" is the 126th episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the sixth episode of the sixth season. Roxann Dawson (who does not appear in this episode) makes her directorial debut.

Plot

Tuvok and Neelix have returned from a diplomatic mission concerning two races in conflict. Tuvok scans the shuttle used on the trip, discovering a cloaking frequency, and suffers neurological damage after an attack by an invisible alien. He experiences cognitive impairment, memory loss, personality changes, and loss of emotional control. With help from the race they had just met with, Voyager receives a deputy investigator with theories on the terminally cloaked alien race, allowing Voyager to expose them.

Neelix resolves to help Tuvok recover. In the process, they develop a deep friendship, one that Neelix has desired but Tuvok has till late denied. As Tuvok's recovery ensues, he slowly is able to recall details of the encounter, as well as discover new abilities in himself such as preparing desserts and enjoying jazz.

Riddles (Arabic)

Riddles are historically a significant genre of Arabic verse, and extensive scholarly collections have also been made of riddles in oral circulation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Terminology

Riddles are known in Arabic principally as lughz (pl. alghāz), but other terms include uḥjiyya (pl. aḥājī), and ta'miya. The term mu‘ammā (literally 'blinded' or 'obscured') is sometimes used as a synonym for lughz (or to denote cryptography or codes more generally), but it can be used specifically to denote a riddle which is solved 'by combining the constituent letters of the word or name to be found'.

Lughz is a capacious term. As al-Nuwayrī (1272–1332) puts it in the chapter on alghāz and aḥājī in his Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab:

This array of terms goes beyond those covered by riddle in English, into metaphor, ambiguity, and punning, indicating the fuzzy boundaries of the concept of the riddle in literary Arabic culture.

Early attestations

Riddles are attested in early Arabic literary culture, 'scattered in old stories attributed to the pre-Islamic bedouins, in the ḥadīth and elsewhere; and collected in chapters. These collections include al-Zahra by Ibn Dā’ūd al-Iṣbahāni (ch. 89), al-’Iqd al-farīd by Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih (book 25, section entitled Bāb al-lughz), and Ḥilyat al-muḥāḍara by al-Ḥātimi. 'The works of Abū al-‘Alā’ al-Mar‘arrī are riddled with riddles', and al-Mar‘arrī's lost work Gāmi‘ al-awzān is also thought to have contained many riddles, some of which are preserved by later scholars, principally Ibn al-‘Adīm. Several stories in One Thousand and One Nights involve riddles.