Q 01/05

What was Oedipus's answer to the Sphinx's riddle about what goes on four feet, then two, then three?

A) Man

B) A dog

C) The Sun

D) A river

Answer · why

A) Man

Man: a baby crawls on all fours, an adult walks on two legs and the old lean on a stick. In the usual telling the beaten Sphinx then threw herself fro...

Q 02/05

Which two sisters 'each give birth to the other' in a riddle from an ancient Greek tragedy about Oedipus?

A) Sea and sky

B) Day and night

C) Life and death

D) Sun and moon

Answer · why

B) Day and night

Day and night: each gives birth to the other in endless turn, and both words are feminine in Greek, which makes them sisters. Some later accounts make...

Q 03/05

What did Samson's riddle 'Out of the eater, something to eat' describe?

A) Milk from a wild goat

B) Figs from a fallen tree

C) Honey in a lion's carcass

D) Wine from a crushed grape

Answer · why

C) Honey in a lion's carcass

Honey in a lion's carcass: Samson had killed a lion and later found bees and honey in its body (Judges 14); the Philistines got the answer only by pre...

Q 04/05

What was the answer to the riddle that probably became the nursery rhyme 'Humpty Dumpty'?

A) A clock

B) A cannon

C) A drunk king

D) An egg

Answer · why

D) An egg

An egg: the riddle probably played on 'humpty dumpty' being 18th-century slang for a short, clumsy person, who might survive a fall from a wall where ...

Q 05/05

In the traditional answer to the riddle 'As I was going to St Ives', who is going to St Ives?

A) Just the narrator

B) The man and his wives

C) Everyone in the rhyme

D) Nobody at all

Answer · why

A) Just the narrator

Just the narrator: the man, his wives and their sacks, cats and kits are only met on the road, so they are taken to be coming the other way and all th...