Facebook and Giraffes

It’s 3 a.m., the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors! It’s your parents and they are here for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese. What is the first thing you open?

This riddle has been going around Facebook for a bit and has become really popular. It works by having somebody post this riddle as their status and you message them what you think the answer is. If you’re right you get the satisfaction, if you’re wrong you have to make a giraffe your profile photo. The answer to this riddle is the door. Many people try to say it is “your eyes,” but it is generally accepted that the answer is the door like it was generally meant to be. If you want to be as tedious to say the answer is your eyes than really you could also say your air passage or a number of other answers.

For more riddles visit Good Riddles Now’s best riddles and answers section.

Why authors use riddles

Riddles are okay, but not that great. So why do we see them so much in popular culture. We see them so much in pop culture because all of the people who make and influence pop culture loves them. Some of the people that had a love for riddles are Stephen King, Dan Brown, Aristotle, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, and many more. A great example of one of these riddles written by Edgar Allan Poe:

The noblest name in Allegory’s page,
The hand that traced inexorable rage; 
A pleasing moralist whose page refined, 
Displays the deepest knowledge of the mind; 
A tender poet of a foreign tongue, 
(Indited in the language that he sung.) 
A bard of brilliant but unlicensed page 
At once the shame and glory of our age, 
The prince of harmony and stirling sense, 
The ancient dramatist of eminence, 
The bard that paints imagination’s powers, 
And him whose song revives departed hours, 
Once more an ancient tragic bard recall, 
In boldness of design surpassing all. 
These names when rightly read, a name [[make]] known 
Which gathers all their glories in its own.

The answer is actually 11 separate authors:

Line(s) – Author
1 – Spenser 
2 – Homer 
3-4 – Aristotle 
5-6 – Kallimachos 
7-8 – Shelley 
9 – Alexander Pope. 
10 – Euripides 
11 – Mark Akenside 
12 – Samuel Rogers 
13-14 – Euripidies 
15-16 – William Shakespeare

For more riddles from great people visit Great Authors That Riddle. 

For some more riddles to solve on your own visit Good Riddle Now’s funny riddle section.

Riddles by Neil Gaiman’s

Neil Gaiman is not the most well-known author, but he is very popular and has received more awards for writing than most authors. He has an affinity for riddles, including them in many of his works. One of the riddles from his works:

When there is a fire inside you i am still cold.

The answer to this riddle is a mirror.

For more riddles from this man visit Riddles of Gaiman. 

For some riddles for yourself visit Good Riddles Now’s kids riddles and answers section.

The Greeks and Their Riddles

Ancient Greece was a civilization that lasted from around 700 BC to about 600 AD. It spread across Europe and beyond to become one of the most powerful civilizations to ever exist. This civilization was home to many of the greatest men of history including Homer, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. A less known fact about these great men of academia is that they loved riddles. Here is a riddle in Homer’s life:

We have what we did not find; what we did find we left behind.

The answer to this riddle is lice. Homer supposedly journeyed to an island called Ios and was posed this riddle by some boys who were just fishing. He then dies while pondering the answer.

For more riddles from Homer and other great Greeks visit Riddles of the Greeks.

For some riddles of your own visit Good Riddles Now’s hard riddle section.

Riddles and Homer

Most people who go through the American schooling system are somewhat familiar with Homer, the Greek poet. He, like most learned people of his time, loved riddles. In fact, it may have been a riddle that killed him. Homer went to an oracle who told him when he went to Ios he would encounter some boys who would tell him a riddle, marking his death. Some say he tripped and died while trying to solve this riddle:

We have what we did not find; what we did find we left behind.

Some boys who were fishing posed this riddle to him, but the true answer to the riddle is lice. Another famous riddle associated with him is the riddle of the Sphinx, a riddle posed to a character in Homer’s epic the Odyssey:

What is that which in the morning goeth upon four feet; upon two feet in the afternoon; and in the Evening upon three?”

The answer to this common riddle is man.

For more information about Homer and his riddles visit Riddles of Homer.

For some more great riddles visit Good Riddles Now’s good riddles section.

Riddles from Socrates

The father of philosophy, Socrates, was also a man of riddles. The most popular one comes from the Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle is asked by a man:

Is anyone wiser than Socrates?

The Oracle answers simply with “no!” This becomes a riddle for Socrates and he must find out why this Oracle said he is the wisest person since he knows that he is not. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that his wisdom comes from the fact that he can admit that he does not always know the answer, unlike other wise men.

For more about Socrates and his riddles visit Riddle of Socrates.

For a few great riddles of your own visit Good Riddles Now’s hard riddles section.

Riddles and Aristotle

Aristotle is probably the best Philosopher of the Greek empire with many of his original writings are still very relevant, even today. He thought that they were very useful in creating metaphors and explaining things that would be very hard to explain otherwise (through the use of straightforward text). Here is what he said about riddles:

Well-constructed riddles are attractive [because] a new idea is conveyed, … The thought is startled, and … does not fit in with the ideas you already have… The effect produced … is a surprise.

For a riddle from his actual works and more about Aristotle visit the Riddles of Aristotle.

For some great riddles of your own visit Good Riddles Now’s funny riddles and answers section.

The Riddles of Plato

Plato is one of the best and first philosophers in Western society. Being one of the first great academic men of history he had very little to work off of and a lot of work to do. One little known fact about him is that he was a sucker for some good riddles. One of his riddles from his dialogue, the Republic, goes as follows:

There is a story that a man and not a man
Saw and did not see a bird and not a bird
Perched on a branch and not a branch
And hit him and did not hit him with a rock and not a rock.

Essentially this riddle is asking you how this set of conditions could be possible. The answer is pretty clever and allows for all of the ambiguity in the riddle:

A eunuch who did not see well saw a bat perched on a reed and threw a pumice stone at him which missed.

For more riddles from Plato visit Riddles of Plato. 

For more riddles in general visit Good Riddle’s Now’s best riddles section.

Great Riddle Writers: Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe is a great poet who has written countless well-known works. But did you know he was also an avid writer of riddles. He also thought of himself as one of the greatest cipher/riddle solvers of his time. Here is one of his great riddles from one of his short stories called The Gold-bug:

53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.)4‡);806*;48†8
¶60))85;;]8*;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96
*?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*—4)8
¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡
1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4
(‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;

This riddle is a cryptogram and can be decrypted using a substitution cipher using letter frequencies. When decrypted this reads:

A good glass in the bishop’s hostel in the devil’s seat
twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north
main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death’s-head
a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.

For more riddles from Poe visit Riddles of Edgar Allan Poe. 

For more on Poe visit his Wikipedia page.

For some great riddles visit Good Riddles Now’s kids riddles section.

Riddles of Robert Langdon (Dan Brown)

Dan Brown is a great author, one of the greatest of our time and has become wildly popular recently for his novels staring Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor. These books have a lot of great riddles that have been taken from real history and combined into the story in a comprehensive way. One of his riddle from one of his novels Angels and Demons:

From Santi’s Earthly Tomb with Demons Hole,
‘Cross Rome the mystic elements unfold,
The Path of Light is laid, the sacred test,
Let angels guide you on your lofty quest.

The meaning of this riddle dictates Robert Langdon’s movements across Rome and the Vatican in attempting to save the city itself and four of the cardinals who are up to be the next pope. For the answer to the riddle and more on Dan Brown’s riddles visit Riddles of Dan Brown. 

For some great riddles of your own visit Good Riddles Now’s kids riddles section.