My votes for Most Unfair Riddles in Literature

[xiphias]

#3: Bilbo Baggins to Gollum: "What have I got in my pockets?"

#2: Exeter Book Riddle #86:

"With cwom gongan, þær weras sæton
monige on mædle mode snottre
hæfde an eage ond earan twa
ond twegen fet, twelf hund heafda
hrycg ond wombe ond honda twa
earmas ond eaxle, anne sweoran
ond sidan twa. Saga hwæt ic hatte."

"A creature came walking where men sat, many in an assembly, wise in mind; it had one eye and two ears, and two feet, twelve hundred heads, a back and a belly and two hands, arms and shoulders, one neck and two sides. Say what it is called.

And my vote for the number 1 most unfair riddle in literature:
#1: Judges 14:14 -- "Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet."

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

The answers, in no particular order: match the answer to the riddle as you see fit!

"I killed a lion and a bunch of bees build a hive in it."

"The One Ring to Rule Them All."

"A one-eyed garlic seller."

[tavella.livejournal.com]

For the last one, lion's sweetbreads.

[403.livejournal.com]

3) The One Ring.
2) A committee.
1) Mothers' milk.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

2) A committee

but it says 'wise in mind'!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Lyle's Golden Syrup still features a dead lion being buzzed about by bees, with the motto "Out of the strong came forth sweetness". I always took them for flies, because why would bees be interested in a dead lion? This either betrays a deep childhood ignorance in me, despite years of church and Sunday school, or else it underscores the deep, deep weirdness of their choice of brand marker.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

(tho' it delights me now that they still stick to it, and I am in hopes that generations yet to come will still assume that the sticky golden glory is actually lion-juice, as we did)

[403.livejournal.com]

I read the "wise" bit as describing the people being riddled at. Is that not the case?

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

And somehow all these riddles come with stakes attached to them...

[tceisele.livejournal.com]

The worst thing about that last one, where the answer was supposed to be a beehive in a lions carcass, is that Samson was almost certainly incorrect. Honeybees would be exceedingly unlikely to build a hive in a relatively fresh animal carcass (and if you go and read Judges 14, it sounds like we are at most talking about an elapsed time of maybe a few weeks, hardly long enough for a beehive to get established and produce a honey surplus).

What *is* likely, is that the carcass was being eaten by bee-mimic flies, like the drone flies in the genus Eristalis. These do look rather alarmingly like honeybees, and they swarm around decomposing organic matter in great quantities.

As for his claim to have scraped "honey" out of it, well . . . on the farm, we had a manure spreader that we called the "honey wagon". Yeah, it would have been more like that.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I seem what you mean, and can read it either way. Darn those dangling appositives...

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

If it meant possible control of My Precious I'd be pretty tempted to cheat too...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Heh. Thank you. I think.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Just so you know: we have the same riddle in Latin: Symposia by Lactinus, number 96. And THOSE come with answers, so there is a generally-accepted "right answer."

The reason I wouldn't go for your answer is that, clear lunchtime, it is VERY VERY CLEAR that a committee has more than one belly.

Possibly fewer than two ears, too.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

The Exeter Book isn't that bad. The stakes are probably more beer-pong stakes, not "kill a regiment of Philistines and steal their clothes" stakes. Get an answer wrong and chug a mug of beer; not "get an answer wrong and be eaten by Gollum".

[kiya]

To be fair to Bilbo, he was talking to himself, and Gollum decided that his mumbling had to be a riddle....

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

True -- in that case, while the riddle is unfair, the riddler is innocent.