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{{Short description|Statement with a double meaning used as a puzzle}} {{other uses}} [[File:Oedipus and the Sphinx of Thebes, Red Figure Kylix, c. 470 BC, from Vulci, attributed to the Oedipus Painter, Vatican Museums (9665213064).jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Attic red-figure kylix c. 470 BCE: Oedipus ponders the [[riddle of the Sphinx]], with the fate of Thebes at stake]] {{Puzzles |types}} A '''riddle''' is a [[:wikt:statement|statement]], [[question]], or [[phrase]] having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a [[puzzle]] to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in [[metaphor]]ical or [[Allegory|allegorical]] language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and ''conundra'', which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer. [[Archer Taylor]] says that "we can probably say that riddling is a universal art" and cites riddles from hundreds of different cultures including Finnish, Hungarian, American Indian, Chinese, Russian, Dutch, and Filipino sources amongst many others.<ref name=":1" />{{rp|3}} Many riddles and riddle-themes are internationally widespread. In the assessment of [[Elli Köngäs-Maranda]] (originally writing about [[Malaita|Malaitian]] riddles, but with an insight that has been taken up more widely), whereas [[myth]]s serve to encode and establish social norms, "riddles make a point of playing with conceptual boundaries<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lieber |first=Michael D. |date=1976 |title=Riddles, Cultural Categories, and World View |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/539692 |journal=The Journal of American Folklore |volume=89 |issue=352 |pages=255–265 |doi=10.2307/539692 |issn=0021-8715|url-access=subscription }}</ref> and crossing them for the intellectual pleasure of showing that things are not quite as stable as they seem" — though the point of doing so may still ultimately be to "play with boundaries, but ultimately to affirm them".<ref>Elli Köngäs Maranda, "Riddles and Riddling: An Introduction", ''The Journal of American Folklore'', 89 (1976), 127–37 (p. 131); {{doi|10.2307/539686}}; {{JSTOR|539686}}; cf. Hannah Burrows, "Wit and Wisdom: The Worldview of the Old Norse-Icelandic Riddles and their Relationship to Eddic Poetry", in ''Eddic, Skaldic, and Beyond: Poetic Variety in Medieval Iceland and Norway'', ed. by Martin Chase (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), pp. 114–35 (p. 116).</ref>
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