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A riddle can be described as
a statement or a question that stimulates your mind with it's double or
hidden meaning, intended as a brain puzzle to be solved. In today's
world, as in the past, we can find many different types of riddles,
mainly part of two big families: - Enigmas (from enigma in ancient Latin); which are basically sorts of problems normally expressed in allegorical figures and metaphorical words. To solve these type of riddles it's suitable to wake up all the ingenuity and lateral thinking to find out the hidden meaning. -Conundrums; questions relying for their effects on punning in either the original question or the final answer. Very often you can find riddles in old English poetry, old Latin histories, and in the first Norse literature of the Elder Edda and the group of skalds. The most famous riddle of the literature and of the ancient culture is the one proposed by the Egiptian Sfinx (creature known as to be the most aenigmatic monster of the ancient world). Many books and papers quote the famous story about the Sfinx asking travelers to solve the following riddle: "What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?" This is one of the most classical riddles and it well explains the way to solve this kind of puzzles. You should in fact find the secret meaning of the terms "morning", "afternoon", "evening". If you assume for example that these words are close to a man's life cycle (youth, average, old man), your brain will probably help you in finding the solution. When a man is a baby he learns to walk by using four legs, then in the average he walks erectus with two legs, and when he is old he uses a stick to help his movements, adding a leg to the two he uses. This riddle is a good example to explain what is lateral thinking needed to reach the hidden solution. |