GoodRiddles Articles

Every culture and group of people have their own folklore. Folklore is stories that are passed on from generation to generation through spoken language. For this reason folklore is the oldest form of history we have. It was also very useful before the invention of written language, allowing parents and grandparents to pass their knowledge on to their children in a memorable way. One common feature in folklore that exists in almost every society is the presence of riddles; many popular folktal......read more

We all know what knock knock jokes are. If somebody walked up to you on the street and said "Knock knock," you would probably respond "Who's there?" There are few other phrases and responses that are ingrained into our minds to this extent. But where exactly did these sorts of jokes/riddles come from? This question is yet to be answered. We don't know where exactly these jokes were first conceptualized, but we do know when they were first known to appear in the media . The first appearance of......read more

Facebook is one of the largest websites and pretty much everyone has an account on Facebook. Originally meant to be a person to person social network, Facebook has expanded its utility and people now use Facebook for pretty much everything. One of the newly popularized things Facebook has been used for is to riddle. This particular riddle has made its way across Facebook in the form of a game:It's 3 a.m., the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors! It's your parents and they are ......read more

Riddles are fun and a good way to work your brain on a daily basis, but are most people using it to improve their brain or their ego? When you hear a riddle you have already heard in the past do you say you've heard it or do you act like you thought of the answer all by yourself? When most people hear riddles they have already heard they quickly regurgitate the answer as if they came up with it on their own and should be praised for their great intellect. Obviously this is unfounded praise an......read more

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Ancient Greece was an ancient civilization that lasted from the 8th century BC to the seventh century AD. This civilization flourished and spread for centuries and was a mecca for intellectuals and artists. Most of our modern day philosophy, logic, mathematics, and literature is heavily based on ideas that were conceptualized by citizens of Ancient Greece. One niche aspect of study that these Greeks were enthused about and embraced is riddles. Many great Greeks loved, studied, and wrote riddl......read more

Neil Gaiman is a popular modern writer of novels, graphic novels, and short stories. He has received a large amount of awards for these works including the Carnegie and Newbery medals for the same novel, The Graveyard Book. He was born in 1960 in Portchester, Hampshire, England. Growing up he was a bright child and learned to read and enjoy books at a very young age. Other than this his education was fairly plain. His great writing skills are the result of years of hard work and practice. One......read more

How can somebody be famous throughout the world and be known by almost everybody while still maintaining such mystery around themselves such that nobody even knows when or where they lived. We do think Homer lived in the 8th century BC, although it is possible he lived earlier. Homer, who was the greatest of all of the Greek epic poets, has achieved this level of fame and mystery. He is known for his epics the Iliad and the Odyssey. Even with his work's vast popularity and the large amount of......read more

Socrates was a great Greek Philosopher who lived from 469 BC to 399 BC. His life and his ideas mark one of the most drastic transformations in philosophical ideals in human history. Before him there had been an array of other philosophers in Greek society but they all had different ideologies. These varying philosophies did not survive nearly as well as Socrates' own, especially since a lot of his own ideas still survive to this day. The train of thought often regarded as being the first is t......read more

Riddles have been around for a very long time. We recognize them today as little puns to be solved for fun, and many of us even know a few of them off hand. But to the people in Greek society riddles were more important because they were very useful in answering unanswerable questions and a they were large source of entertainment. One of the most avid riddle collectors and the first person to actually study riddles with regards to rhetoric was Aristotle. He said the following about riddles in......read more

Plato was a man of science who lived in the 300's and 400's BC. He was mentored by Socrates and taught Aristotle at his institute for higher learning, simply called the Academy. When tracing back almost any branch of science, literature, philosophy, or mathematics it is hard not to arrive at Plato at some point. The primary modern application of his works is in philosophy though. Like many Greek men of logic, Plato recognized the great importance of riddles in society. He saw that they were a......read more

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, author, and editor. He lived from 1809 to 1849, dying at the young age of 40. He is best known for being a part of the American Romantic Movement. He was also one of the pioneers of short stories and the detective fiction genre. This genre goes hand in hand with riddles, puzzles, and mysteries. Aside from his own writings Poe loved puzzles, ciphers, and really all riddles. He thought of himself as a genius who could solve any kind of puzzle and do it more......read more

Dan Brown is an American Novelist and is one of the most read authors living today. All of his novels are treasure hunts that involve a series of riddles that must be solved in a day's time. All of his books are heavily based on codes, cryptology, and conspiracy theories as well. His most popular novels are focused on Robert Langdon, a professor at Harvard University: Angels and Demons , The Da Vinci Code , The Lost Symbol , and Inferno . In all of these novels he must follow secret societies......read more

This Dan Brown novel chronicles Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon's adventures in Vatican City as he tries to stop the Illuminati from destroying the city with an antimatter bomb. He must maneuver all of the riddles they have set up to shroud themselves. The book opens just like The Da Vinci Code, with a murder. A physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research is found murdered with an "Illuminati" ambigram on his chest. This is where the antimatter bomb is stolen from; if it is......read more

Robert Langdon is back for his third adventure in his very eventful life as a Harvard symbologist. The novel begins with him giving a lecture by invitation from his mentor, a Freemason Peter Solomon who is the head of the Smithsonian Institute. His mentor gave him a sealed package to keep safe years earlier and has requested he bring it. But upon arrival he learns that Solomon didn't make this request himself, but it was his kidnapper, Mal'akh. Mal'akh contacts Langdon and tells him if he can......read more

This novel is the most recent installation of books staring Harvard professor Robert Langdon. This novel is just as full of riddles, art, and secret societies as all of the others. This time the novel begins with him in danger rather than somebody else. He wakes up in a hospital with no recollection of the past few days. The first riddle of the book and his first riddle comes after he and one of his doctors, Sienna Brooks, escape to her apartment from an assassin who comes to the hospital to ......read more

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?If nobody is looking at the moon, does it exist.The first riddle originates, in a slightly different form, from a June 1883 edition of a magazine called The Chautauquan. The second riddle is a question that is said to have been asked by Albert Einstein to Niels Bohr. When looking at these questions in a scientific and logical way, the answer to the first is no and the answer to the second is yes. The first rid......read more

Stephen King is a great contemporary writer of novels like "The Shining" and "Pet Cemetery". He has sold millions of copies of his novels and many of them have been adapted into movies. Aside from writing great novels, he also writes a good riddle. Here is one of his riddles from the Dark Tower series:Not chest or box is now discussed. Money can be held in it, but just as we test its metal, within it there is rust.The answer to this riddle is trust. This riddle is a part of the riddle competi......read more

Jane Austen was an English novelist who has become extremely popular for her novels, including 'Sense and Sensability' and 'Pride and Prejudice'. She wrote these novels between 1811 and 1818. A lesser known fact about her is that she wrote a lot of great riddles. The riddles she wrote could also be called charades; in the past charades could also mean a riddle in verse or prose. Most of the charades she wrote were written one syllable at a time. Each syllable was described separately in the r......read more

In a world where children's lives are becoming increasingly more invested in social networks, it is becoming very important to find ways to bond with children and help them learn outside of these networks. A very good way of doing this is sharing riddles with children and teaching them the logic behind them. Riddles are more beneficial and can improve children's mental state in more ways than you may expect.Introduce them to intellectual humor: Laughter is important to happiness and health. I......read more