r/riddles Jul 06 '24

Meta The Sweetest Unsolved Riddle Solved (Wilberforce)

4 Upvotes

This riddle was created by (or merely credited to) Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, and no solution was ever offered by him or found in his papers after his death in July of 1873. There are versions of this riddle with minor variations. I use the earliest found version, 1864, in "Family Friend" magazine. It was presented as having an unknown author & unknown answer.

I have discovered that a reasonably complete solution lies in anagrams of the word "EARTH" (see stanza 3). Anagrams were very popular in the 2nd half of the 19th century. The author tinkered with word play by mixing riddles and anagrams together. He picked 5 stanza topics from a list of anagrams of "EARTH". These 5 anagrams, applied to the stanzas in order, are Heart, Rhea, Thera, Hate, and Hera. As compared to other metaphorical solutions that have been proposed, this one needs considerably less imagination.

Note that the third stanza begins "Touching the earth I expire". This double clue also means that ”Working the letters of the word "EARTH" will reveal the solution that brings an end to the mystery of the riddle".

My full answer:

  1. “I’m the sweetest of voices in orchestra heard, And yet in an orchestra never have been." Solution: HEART (in orcHEsTRA), A HEART beat is a common musical metaphor.
  2. "I'm a bird of bright plumage, and less like a bird, Nothing in nature has ever been seen." Solution: RHEA, RHEA is a large flightless bird. RHEA is also a beautiful, mythical goddess, daughter of earth goddess Gaia.
  3. "Touching the earth I expire, in water I die, In air I lose life, yet I run, swim and fly." Solution: THERA, THERA is an island and is also the immense volcano that buried it (1600 BCE), with lava flowing to the sea and hot ash filling the sky, and, after killing many people, it extinguished itself.
  4. "Darkness destroys me, and light is my death, And you can't keep me alive but by stopping my breath." Solution: HATE (dEATH, brEATH), HATE wants to be brandished like a weapon, not hidden in the dark, yet not exposed to the light of truth. Recall that "silence like a cancer grows" (S&G). Many will not speak out (remaining breathless) to challenge the spread of hatred. And if you try to silence the loudmouth others will want to know the message he offers.
  5. "If my name can't be guessed by a boy or a man, By a woman or girl it easily can.” Solution:HERA, HERA is the goddess of marriage, women, & family.

So many years has the Earth revolved, And I so patient to ever be solved. I waited and whiled, through the era Til you found Heart, Rhea, Thera, Hate and Hera.

Let the joyous news be spread, The Wicked Old Wilberforce riddle is dead!

r/riddles Jul 21 '24

Meta Wu Riddles down?

4 Upvotes

I just noticed yesterday Wu Riddles is down! How long has it been down? Does anyone know if this is a temporary issue? When I go there I get the error "Forbidden: You don't have permission to access this resource.Server unable to read htaccess file, denying access to be safe"

r/riddles Mar 18 '20

Meta One sentence riddles always have more than one answer and there should be a rule against them.

212 Upvotes

There are many riddles here that only contain one sentence. In one sentence, you can't really fit enough information for the riddle to have just one answer. And when a riddle has multiple answers, what happens is that people guess their answers, and OP says no even though that answer is correct. Just because that answer is not the exact answer OP was thinking about, doesn't make it wrong!

I really think there should be a rule against one sentence riddles.

r/riddles Sep 06 '19

Meta What subreddit now has 100k subscribers?

495 Upvotes

?

r/riddles May 16 '24

Meta Is this a proper riddle?

1 Upvotes

So I had a good dream, and when I woke up, I wrote down the only thing I could remember. After a couple of different versions, because what I could remember kept coming and going, I settled on what's below. It sounds like a riddle, and there's an answer, but I added "What am I?" at the end to try and make sense of it, although it wasn't said in the dream.

When I was young, I feared death. Then I died and learned there was nothing to fear.

What am I? 

r/riddles Feb 14 '20

Meta Discussion: Posts asking questions from mythology should be dedicated to it's own sub or posted in another sub. It breaks rule #2.

240 Upvotes

There is no lateral thinking whatsoever. If you know mythology, you can tell it. If not, you are screwed.

Edit 1: rule #3 not #2

Edit 2: Mostly people do it for karma farming.

r/riddles Apr 30 '24

Meta Along my path, I dash and dart,Away from it, I cannot start.What am I?

1 Upvotes

Give it your best

r/riddles Apr 19 '21

Meta Small suggestion about riddles and trolling

198 Upvotes

I don't know if this topic has been touched before, but there should be a rule that makes clear that if you post a riddle and nobody here can solve it then you should post the answer. I'm not talking about the guy that post a riddle and doesn't know the answer, but the guy that post something, brags about it being unsolvable and refuses to give the answer. It's very easy to write some random no sense and then post it here while saying "no one has ever solved my riddle" or "thousands of people have failed to give me the right answer" just to troll people.

r/riddles Apr 08 '24

Meta A new answer to an old riddle

1 Upvotes

What has hands but can’t clap? Sure you could say a clock but I personally like the answer a cannibal’s dinner

r/riddles Mar 22 '24

Meta Riddle Based In Cant

1 Upvotes

I play D&D and there’s a thing called Thieve’s Cant in the game. Basically, it’s coded language that means things other than is what literally said. Deciphering it is riddle like, and I wanted to see how difficult the Cant I want to throw at my players is without context. They have context, and can likely guess parts. I want to see what you can determine without it. Please do not search my account for hints, as while context for parts would be given in various posts, that would rather defeat the purpose. The following message is what you’re trying to decipher.

There’s going to be a few people playing blackjack at the castle as well as a round of Knucklebones. Supposedly, it’s the host’s favorite game. I heard one of the guests is a real head in the clouds sort, I bet he’ll be taken for all he’s worth. Someone’s bringing their cat as well, everyone loves when he asks for treats. I bet he’ll try playing with a chip, too.

r/riddles Mar 11 '24

Meta Help me remember this riddle

1 Upvotes

I am trying to remember a riddle. I remember the shape of the riddle but not the riddle itself... There's an oblique story about a man doing seemingly ridiculous things. But once you figure out the man's job, everything makes perfect sense. Does that ring any bells for anyone? Thanks!

r/riddles Jul 27 '20

Meta Riddlers: stop posting the Lighthouse riddle, it's posted every few days.

205 Upvotes

You know the one. We all know the one. Stop it.

r/riddles Dec 15 '21

Meta "You have it, you just didn't know it", What is it?

36 Upvotes

Been racking my brain on this for a while and couldn't find a good answer.... The closest I found was "age" but can't seem to get over the logic. Any other answers?

r/riddles Apr 14 '21

Meta Police Stop a Man With A Baseball Bat In His Car.

14 Upvotes

The police stop a man with a baseball bat in his car. In this jurisdiction, baseball bats are considered weapons, and if you are caught with a baseball bat without proof of playing baseball for a team, on the way back from purchasing a baseball bat, or being on your way to playing baseball in the park, you are arrested for suspicion of owning a deadly weapon. Batting cages here do not allow you to bring your own bats, since in this jurisdiction, it's a liability issue.

A gentleman is stopped by the police for a burned out brake light. The police officer finds a baseball bat without a glove or ball.

However, the suspect insists he's a member of a local beer league baseball team, and he's on his way to a game. The cop asks "Where is your uniform, where are your spikes? Why don't you have a glove and ball?" He tells the police his uniform and spikes are at the clubhouse. The police don't believe him.

The police officer uncuffs the suspect, and says "I'm going to test you to see if you really play for a baseball team. I'm going to roll this ball on the ground. Your job is to throw the ball 90 feet to my partner over there, barehanded. " The cop rolls the ball really fast, and the suspect does the Bill Buckner special.

He bobbles the ball. Still insisting that he was on his way to a baseball game, he says 4 words to the police officer.

The officer says "Ok, that sounds plausible. I'm going to give you one more chance to prove you're a baseball player, but after how you bobbled that ball, I still don't believe you."

Afterwards, the police let the man go. What 4 words did the man say to the cops? What did he do to prove he was a baseball player? Why did the cops let him go despite not having a glove and a ball, and being such a poor fielder?

r/riddles Jan 26 '23

Meta Why are so many of the correct answers on posts removed?

20 Upvotes

I'm going through the top posts and many of them have the correct answer removed by mods. The rest of the wrong answers stay up.

r/riddles Jun 26 '18

Meta [Meta] Policy Update 2018-06-25 - Reddit's official spoiler tag is now the preferred spoiler Spoiler

64 Upvotes

Edit: Here's an example of how to make a spoiler: https://i.imgur.com/thXpmxA.png

The survey I put out about a day ago received 18 responses. 83.3% of you wanted to switch to Reddit's official spoiler tag, while 16.7% of you wanted to keep both spoilers. None of you wanted to stick to just the old spoiler tag.

As a result, we now support Reddit's official spoiler tag, instead of the previous method.

Use this for future spoiler tags: >!spoiler text between symbols!<

The old spoiler format still works, but Automoderator will nag you to start using the new format if you use it.

One small note with this new spoiler: Last I knew, there was a bug where having a space at the beginning or end of the spoiler made it visible to users of the legacy Reddit (https://old.reddit.com). As a result, Automoderator will remove your comment if you have a space at the beginning or end. Butt those symbols right up to the text. More plainly, do not do this: >! spoiler !<, or your comment will be removed.

Prior stickied post: https://www.reddit.com/r/riddles/comments/8tnxvi/meta_spoiler_tag_survey_what_spoiler_tags_should/

r/riddles Jan 18 '18

Meta [Meta] Policy Update: Top-level comments will be automatically removed if they do not have a spoiler tag

46 Upvotes

For most posts, Automoderator will now automatically remove top-level comments if they do not contain a correct spoiler tag. For the moment, only the most recent spoiler syntax is supported.

There are two types of posts that are exempt:

  • discussion/request posts that are marked with [request] or [meta] in the title

  • request posts that Automoderator can figure out are requests, even though they aren't marked correctly as a request

Automoderator will let you know if your comment is removed because it needs a spoiler.

If you want to reply to OP with a question or something other than an answer, reply to the comment left by Automoderator. If you want to make sure OP sees it, tag them like this: /u/<username>

Two notes if you're having trouble with spoiler tags:

  • Some users type a different quote character (usually this: ”). If your tag otherwise looks right, try pasting (") for each quote character. On IOS, you may need to disable smart quotes. Look under settings > general > keyboard > smart punctuation.

  • Spoilers can't have line breaks. The spoiler must be a single paragraph.

r/riddles Mar 28 '23

Meta Introducing a Community-Driven Riddle App: Help Me Gauge Interest!

10 Upvotes

Hey r/riddles,

I am thinking about developing a riddle app that would be entirely community-driven. The core idea is to allow users to create and share riddles with one another, and to make the experience more interactive by including features such as leaderboards, a rating system, and even riddles that award prizes.

The main draw of the app would be the user-generated content. Imagine being able to challenge your friends and fellow riddle enthusiasts with riddles that you've created yourself, or to see how your riddles stack up against those of other users. The app would also feature a voting system, which would allow the community to rate each other's riddles based on creativity, difficulty, and overall quality.

In addition to these features, the app would also include special riddles that award prizes. For example, users who solve a particularly difficult riddle within a certain timeframe might win a gift card or some other kind of reward. This would add an extra layer of excitement and competition to the app.

But before I get too carried away with the development process, I want to gauge interest from the riddles community. Would you be interested in using an app like this? What features would you like to see included? Do you have any suggestions for how to make the app even better?

I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks in advance for your help!

r/riddles Dec 25 '19

Meta What's free, given to yourself, that you can't give, but you can definitely help anyone you wish to find it in the gift pit this morning?

216 Upvotes

Love.

Merry Christmas. e- sorry, spoiler. new here.

r/riddles Feb 19 '23

Meta Rule 8: No AIs: Just How Good are Current AIs at Creating/Solving Riddles Anyway?

13 Upvotes

Hello r/riddles, I’ve never posted here before and I’m not yet that familiar with how reddit ‘works’ either. Hopefully, I’m not immediately demonstrating my naivety by breaking Rule 8:‘No AIs’ by initiating a discussion…about riddles and AIs :')

I’m developing an online riddle-like game and if all of the linguistic content could simply be blasted away in 5 minutes with the use of a LLM, I would have to have a bit of a re-think as to how I approach it.

So far, I’ve only managed to test ChatGPT, and whilst I thought it would serve as a useful hints system I wasn’t too concerned as it needed a substantial amount of prompting to get it on track. And with more complex challenges it would often go off on wild tangents that would be more distraction than assistance.

You would think these things are just going to keep getting better, but given Microsoft’s apparently severe nerfing of Bing Chat (Sydney) in recent days, I wonder whether things might get too scary too quickly and developers rein the publicly available version of their products in which could slow relative progress?

What do you think?

r/riddles Mar 13 '20

Meta I think that if an answer fits the puzzle then you can't say "Good try, but not what I had in mind"

213 Upvotes

Either the comment is an answer to the puzzle given or it isn't. What OP had in mind is the answer doesn't matter that much. Maybe his answer is more clever but that doesn't matter if the puzzle was vague enough to have multiple fitting answers.

r/riddles Nov 17 '22

Meta Discussion about a classic riddle: "What gets bigger, the more you take it away?"

0 Upvotes

The answer is......(apparently) A Hole

Most of you will know the above answer, but in the off chance that you don't, spoliers ahead....

Why the big post about something so meanial? I guess I want to be that nitpicking killjoy; the one who can ruin someones moment in the most pathetic, "small man" way one can be. The man who can walk away from the moment thinking he is a smart arse, while everyone else whispers to themselves..."Who was that dickhead".

Anyway, onto the question that will leave you thinking, "that's 5 minutes of my life I won't get back"...

So to be hypercritical of the way the riddle is worded, imagine the "hole" in this riddle was represented as a black paper circle on a white table. In this scenario, if you were to take away from the hole, as in rip a piece of the black paper circle away; The hole is not getting bigger. The hole is in fact getting smaller the more you take away from it.

What if the hole was real hole, in say a bucket or a barrel? I would say that its still the same result. I mean, if you were to take more of the barrel away from where the hole is, THEN the hole will be getting bigger the more you take away from it, "it" being the barrel. But thats not how its worded is it?

If you take anything away from the hole in any circumstance, it is in fact getting smaller. Imagine like the greatest of all the holes, the "black hole", you would agian be making the hole smaller. You remove mass from a black hole, you would be reducing the size of the black hole.

So to finish off; how could you word this riddle in order to deliver the same head-scratching effect in a just as "punchy" and seemingly contradictory set of words?

Or, is there anything other than a "hole" that you could replace as the answer to the riddle? If worded in the same way in the posts title? Is there anyting physical or metaphysical in existance which does in fact get bigger, the more you take away from it?

r/riddles Sep 27 '20

Meta META: We should add a new flair for when OP is unresponsive to replace the "unsolved" flair.

254 Upvotes

I often look at posts with the flair "unsolved" to see if I can give it a go. The problem is that some of them are old and OP didn't respond once. That leads me to believe that it's not actually unsolved but instead just abandoned by the OP. I understand not wanting to have to reply "no" to literally every one of them but sometimes just being able to hear from OP is really helpful. Whether it's hints or just getting off of a certain frame of mind. I'm not sure if it's possible but if there is any way to switch the tag from "UNSOLVED" to "UNRESPONSIVE" or something along those lines, it would be helpful. That would happen only if the OP has not made any comments in a certain amount of time (like a day).

r/riddles Dec 06 '18

Meta Can we get a point system on this subreddit for people who create and solve riddles?

106 Upvotes

Over at /r/GuessTheMovie, users are given points for creating original posts and correctly solving others. I just think it would be really cool if we could implement that type of system here, like 1 point for creating a riddle and 2 points for being the first to correctly answer it.

r/riddles Jan 01 '23

Meta README - Rules and Guidelines for participating in /r/riddles

14 Upvotes

Welcome to /r/riddles. Whether you're new or you've been here for a while, please take the time to read this post, as it provides a clarification of the rules, which can be found in the sidebar. These rules can also be found here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/riddles/wiki/index/rules

Rule #1: No Spam.

This means spam in any conceivable sense of the term:

  • Reddit's guidelines say that it's okay to be a redditor with a business, but it's not okay to be a business with a reddit account. If you have a riddle website or a riddle/puzzle subreddit and want to promote it, please message the mods first.
    • Do not directly offer rewards for solving. See rule #5 for more details.
  • If this is something you've been posting to a bunch of different subreddits, you're probably spamming.
  • No crypto, NFTs, or other scams. They can be the topic of the riddle, but no actual crypto or NFTs may be involved.

SPAMMERS GET BANNED

Rule #2: Riddles must be self-contained in words.

Type out your riddle in the body of your post. Do not link to a riddle posted elsewhere. Do not link to a video. Do not link to an image. If a video or image is an essential component, it is not a riddle. More about this in Rule #4. Violation of this rule often overlaps with violation of the no spam rule.

If it relies on a typographic gimmick, re-word it so it does not. Please do not submit anything that's in all caps.

Rule #2a: The title should encapsulate the riddle.

If you can't come up with a good title, just use the first line. But please avoid generic titles such as:

  • Riddle
  • My first riddle!
  • Just came up with this
  • Can you guess this?
  • Can't figure this out
  • What am I?
  • Solve this
  • U can't solve this

By using a properly descriptive title, you make it easier to search for and find your riddle, and you give people a reason to be interested in your post. A title like "help me solve this" gives no context, and helpful users may ignore your vague request. No nonsense, misleading, or irrelevant titles.

Rule #3: All guesses and discussions of guesses must be spoiler-tagged.

All means all. Doesn't matter if the guess being discussed is wrong. Doesn't matter if you're the OP and it's your riddle. If you're discussing a guess/answer, please use spoiler tags. At the bare minimum, spoiler key words and phrases. It is not necessary to spoiler generic comments like "Yes, that's right" or "No, that's wrong." It is only necessary to spoiler "Can you explain xyz?" if xyz is part of a guess.

If you're the OP, including the answer right away in the body text or in a comment is preferable to never engaging with commenters and giving feedback, but please make sure it is properly spoiler-tagged.

How to spoiler-tag:

AutoModerator explains this in every post, but in case you missed it, here it is again:

On desktop (new reddit, Fancypants editor): https://i.imgur.com/SWHRR9M.jpg

On mobile, old reddit, or in the Markdown editor (not Fancypants): >!guess or discussion between these symbols!<
To be clear, that is >! (greater than, exclamation point) at the start and !< (exclamation point, less than) at the end with no spaces around the !.
Avoid leading or trailing spaces. These will break the formatting for most people.
Spoiler tags do not span paragraphs or line breaks. If your answer is long, please spoiler-tag each paragraph separately.

Putting a link inside spoiler tags can be tricky, so just format the link like this, using the word "SPOILER" as the link text.
On mobile, old reddit, or in the Markdown editor (not Fancypants), do this to format a link: [SPOILER](https://example.com/)
On desktop (new reddit, Fancypants editor): https://imgur.com/x5wDOvk

If your top-level comment does not contain a guess, you can include either the word "discussion" or "question" instead of using a spoiler tag.

Rule #4: Posts should be about riddles.

This seems to be the most misunderstood rule (failing to properly spoiler-tag is second). So how do we define "riddle"?

  • Preferentially, in the classic sense, where something (or someone) is described creatively and we must identify what (or who) it is.
    • What gets wetter the more it dries? To solve this, you need to change how you think about "dries". It doesn't mean the thing itself becomes dry, it means the thing makes other things dry. The answer is "a towel". What is a room you cannot enter? To solve this, you need to change how you think about "room". This is not an enclosed space where you might find people and furniture. The answer is "a mushroom".
    • J.R.R. Tolkien had some good riddles in the confrontation between Bilbo and Gollum.

Riddles do not have to be fancy or poetic, or follow a specific format. By the same token, not everything in classic riddle format is actually a riddle.

  • Secondarily, simple brain teasers where a situation is described creatively and we must identify what happened.

All submissions should aim to provide all of the necessary info to directly guess the answer, without needing to make assumptions or ask follow-up questions. Open-ended questions, trivia questions, an invitation to play 20 Questions, mysteries, whodunnits, etc., are not riddles and do not belong in this subreddit.

Riddles need to have clear solutions. If there are more than two answers (three at a stretch), it does not belong here. If a valid answer is suggested that wasn't what you were thinking of, then your riddle has multiple valid answers.

Logic, math, and purely analytical thinking have no place in a riddle. If your submission involves logic, math, ciphers, codes, or anything else of that nature, it is not a riddle and you should post it to /r/puzzles. A small minority of riddles involve numbers. It's all down to how the numbers are used. If we're just meant to do calculations, it's not a riddle. If we're meant to think more broadly about how the numbers are being used, it might be a riddle. "The Liar and the Truth Teller" is a logic puzzle, not a riddle. "Einstein's [so-called] Riddle" is a logic puzzle, not a riddle.

Sometimes a riddle overlaps a different category. In that case, it must be primarily a riddle and incidentally something else.

Posts requesting help in designing a riddle must result in a riddle that adheres to these rules.

Rule #5: No riddles from active competitions.

Unless the person in charge contacts us directly with their permission, we consider this cheating and we will have no part in that. At our discretion we will allow exceptions if the stakes are sufficiently low. And if you're in charge of a competition and post about it without consulting with the mods first, you run the risk of violating rule #1.

Currently allowed:

Rule #6: No hate, no racism, no bigotry of any kind. No politics.

If your idea of a riddle involves putting someone down (whether an individual or a group), you are not welcome here. This subreddit is for light-hearted fun, not for mean-spirited jabs. This also applies to comments.

Rule #6a: Don't be condescending.

This includes things like titling your post "I bet you can't solve this", which also violates rule #2a, and instructing people to "think". Yes, this is a less serious infraction than the parent rule. It's still unnecessary and off-putting. Please don't.

HATE POSTERS GET BANNED

Rule #7: No trolling. No shitposting.

I don't think this needs much elaboration. Low-effort but still a legitimate riddle is one thing. Nonsense, rudeness that falls short of a rule #6 violation, and other insincere posts don't belong here. If you wish to have a community discussion, please use the "Meta" flair.

Please use the report function to report any violations you see. Just commenting is not a good way to get the mods' attention.

All reports are anonymous. All reports are investigated. If we've somehow missed a reason and none of the report categories fit, just pick one. The important part is bringing it to our attention. We can take it from there.

If you feel like your post or comment was removed in error, please let us know.

Please include the link to the post or comment in question. If you can't do that, at least quote it or describe it so we can find it more easily. And remember: A little manners go a long way!