Two Words, One Answer.
word conundrum
 Riddle Me This: A World Treasury of Word Puzzles, Folk Wisdom, and Literary Conundrums $13.95 The cover promises a "World Treasury of Word Puzzles, Folk Wisdom and Literary Conundrums" and instead yields a poorly constructed pile of random writings. After a long yet tedious introduction, the main point of which seems to be to show us how brilliant and erudite the author is, we're treated to "The Pleasury". The author appears to have selected his riddles by scanning world literature looking for pages containing the word "riddle" and then copying down something that looks like a riddle. The "Pleasury" is a random assortment of word riddles guaranteed to be devoid of any sense or context. For example, an African riddle #127 -"Two lions are waiting on the hill". The answer - the ears. This is the kind of riddle where if you hear the answer you can shrug and agree with it, but you would never have a strong belief in the answer without some context. You might guess the answer but you would also equally guess many, many other answers. For a volume of modern, creative riddles, I would suggest Quest for the Riddle Stone: A Riddle Book. That book has fewer riddles, but they're all well written each with one correct answer that can be figured based on what's written. There is a good book waiting to be written of world riddles, but this isn't it. |
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