“Can BookReader please put the collection of homenode riddles in a proper node where we can peruse them at leisure and have a guess?”
There are 153 riddles sitting in a document on my computer in various stages of completion. Some of them are broken, some of them are not complete enough to show anybody. The problem with a lot of them, however, is that they’ve been publish in a wide collection of places and I haven’t the time to go out and collect all the permissions I’d need to put them here. My poetry doesn’t sell terribly well, but when I say “riddle” instead of “poem” they do very well. No idea why. I won’t speculate. A few of these sold riddles were originally e2 riddles and I can’t repeat them here, right now.
However, I will put all the riddles I can post with a few new ones. Each riddle has a title number in the order of composition and the above reasons are why the number jumps around and skips whole chunks. I won’t put the answers below, but if you give up or want to message me a guess, feel free. No rewards for already solved riddles (marked with an X after the number) but I’m happy to give out C!s to spend to anybody who guesses one that isn’t marked.
1. X
A hundred thirty-seven sisters
Drown in the sea
They breach the waves to try and breath
The youngest holds a goddess’s throne in her hands
And the goddess makes land for them.
2. X
Ivory Towers in a line
Each supported from behind
Always forward, never back
Running along a single track
They say hello in passing
And often that's the last thing
3. X
When I get to the floor
I dance around my partner
Around and here, around and there
Around and everywhere
I tiptoe on wires
I travel underground
Sometimes I'm found in the clouds!
4. X
Little black dot on the pavement
I fear you work too hard
Does she care about your daylabor?
Does she know what garden lions’ paths you cross?
What burden it must be in a cast of thousands!
5.
Riddle number five cannot be put on E2 because it is a visual-math riddle. The riddle comes with a little story about a sultan giving his daughter a box, and then the box is depicted. To solve the riddle you must figure out which direction to work around the box and which mathematical operations to use at each level. The final number gives the answer via a simple 1=A 2=B type code to reveal just what gift the daughter gets for her birthday.
6.
Silent nights, so silent I can hear the starlight
Distance increases us, closer closes us
And you are my starlight
If home is where my heart isv
My home is with you
Rustic country where cricket songs stop abruptly
7. X
I’ll start with a heart, but instead of red, bloody, and veiny, it’ll be green and will sit on a stem of needles and prickles. It will choke you if you eat it, yet people eat it all the time. You could say that this is about love, being filled with hearts, but it is no metaphor. True love comes with butter.
8.
A certain philosophical worm dined today and said thus, “While I was eating the meat, I came into thought and it lit a fire down all my ganglia from prostomium to periproct. And I knew! Knew! Knew! Not only the contents of my aortic arches, but the content of my character. But not of what I ate.”
10.
When that which glitters is soaked in blood
And rises late to catch its worm
I sometimes see it moping or gloating
In a churchyard
But never in a church
For the crosses are a fiery eye
Like the Sun
The Hammer of a Vengeful God
Riddling is, of course, an ancient pastime. The Exeter Book which dates to the tenth century has a collection of riddles in them including a few raunchy ones. Riddle 25 goes on at length about being red and bulbous and making maidens cry, but it really is only an onion. Stephen King mentions in a not-so-fake bit in The Dark Tower how riddling contests were a favorite game of people at fair time and a critical part of book 4 in that series deals with the difference between riddles and jokes.
11.
In my garden
flashing
A jewel in flight lingered
Crystal’d in sunlight
Radiant as dew
Glittering like sugar
It saw me
And flew away
12. X
Mold destroyeth he who looks on
But me it makes stronger
My origins are vast
But you probably know me from the bos class
I think of myself as sophisticated
But in truth, I like hamburgers as much as I enjoy wine.
13. X
Her formal dress is all in black
But because she killed her husband
A spot of red confesses her sin
And sends her legs a-dancing
14.
Why winter rings thy fabled throne
When you’ve gone to Hades
Why spring will glow on thy return
When sun glitters on daisies
When thou art alive I will sing thy graces
When dead my chest is filled with empty spaces
15.
(This riddle appears in Flea in the Dark as said by Feste, the owl)
If you can’t guess this riddle
I’ll give you a hint here.
It’s first found in the young year,
And second in a lunar year,
And if still you cannot guess,
I suggest a mirror.
16.
I see a shining dog at night
Nipping at its owner's heels in flight
What one dog one sees is two
(Something hidden from view)
17.
Like David and Goliath, the mightiest warrior might be brought down by the smallest thing. A war can be fought on many fronts and when it comes to war, the smallest thing may lay low the largest armies, from the inside out.
18. X
When the sky opens indoors,
A head that isn’t a head cries.
I will come clean and tell you
About cheap plastic curtains.
19. X
Red for the rubies found at the end
Orange the second color ‘round the bend
Yellow gleam of gold always a friend
Green for fresh spring; winter to amend
Blue drops falling for wind to wend
Indigo to dress clouds ink’d and penned
Violet flowers to show shower’s end
20.
In the windy desert I
Sought the peace in paradise
With a shot full of needles
To strikes the senses senseless
Rage against rational worlds
Tomorrow against mental ones
Not all these riddles are to completion. The rhyme is low in most of them and some seem to ramble. There are two I think are probably unsolvable if only because they don’t give enough hints. Of course, some riddles like to mislead and it’s important to note that if a riddle can have a second answer that fits all its clues, then that answer has to be accepted even if the author didn’t intend it to be the answer.
22.
When you miss me you will die
You may cry for me
Then you’ll have me
But then I won’t help you
23.
Amatory feelings rush by day to day
I forget my place, I wonder about things
Like where your heart goes in the long summer
How long it stays in distant winter
Does the snow fall?
Can you see a sunset?
Does your heart feel?
O you distant globe.
24.
I dreamed I was an ant landed on a strange world
No dirt here, the land was fur and lint
In the distance a mountain rose up
Crawling under it, I found giant legs
Huge beasts sleeping...
An alien environment indeed!
26. X
Sparkling on the ground like a bag of gold
It is young and yet old
You'll find it down south where seldom it goes
In warmer climates when it prefers cold
27.
When Persephone sleeps in her black ground
And Demeter goes into gray mourning
I hold my color
I steal from the one I love
And in turn inspire love
Thus, you’ll speak of me under bows
And kiss in doorways
28.
If you bow your head and weep I’ll
not blame you for it while
you cure my headaches with your blood.
Even if it’s sapped by tiny bugs.
I remember a girl with red
hair whose name was instead
yours. With magic this rose mountain
grew black, as a fountain
polluted.
But fear not, sweet one I
know you are pure and an ally.
When the wind blows you’ll sigh;
I’ll view the sun through leaves and sky.
37.
There’s a thing I’m thinking of that always reminds me of war. A flower in the sky, shooting stars that fly up, and the boom of the thunder. It takes me back to picnics in summer, and watermelon stained lips, and after the dinner when the sky went out, we’d watch the fountains in the dark and wonder at the possibility of bottled fire.
47. X
They call me digital, but I'm manual
If you hammer me I won't hold but hurt
I'm quick when I'm cutting close
You would hate to hear me when I'm bored
56.
Fungus hates it
For the black mold it destroys
Color loves it
But leaves of a broken heart
By heart I mean bonds
For who hasn’t gone white
When love leaves us?
68.
It’s receptive to opening wide
When its little knob is played with
Anyone can come inside
If the right thing enters
69.
I’m thinking of a number greater than one and less than ten. It comes with a shovel to bury bad odds, one out of thirteen. If the shovel is used it’s even worse odds to kill three brothers, one out of fifty-two. If the number is one, that I’m thinking of, then the odds are zero out of any number you care, so one is out, a bad bet to waste on an empty horse. The champion is high, so he’s out too, shovel or not. So, out of two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight, we have to find a friend. Our friend has a property to identify him: To easily add him to a group you must first take one away, as stated before. If he sees double, he kicks one friend away but brings him back and stands shoulder to shoulder until it is time to add again.
Constructing riddles and then solving them isn’t a straightforward affair. To build one, I usually think along the following lines:
What is an object or thing I want to talk about?
What are several attributes of this thing?
What is a key statement that can be used to solve the riddle by bringing the other attributes into focus?
What’s a statement that can mislead? Something that is a true attribute of the answer but that can easily point to something else.
I find that when people guess wrong, they tend to only focus on one clue or line of the poem rather than finding something that can be applied to every clue mentioned. This can lead to wild shotgunning answers in hopes of stumbling upon the right answer: “The wind, no the rain, the fire? Is it fire? What about weather? This has to be a natural phenomenon, right? What about snow? It has to be snow?” The answer should be arrived at by considering all aspects of the poem and picking the one thing that fits all the options, or-- and this is the fun way: sudden epiphany.
74. X
I saw a lady at a party
Drunk to her wit’s end
Grammatically?
No, she stuttered as she spoke
And skipped as she made her way around
Until all the guests were offended
Insisting she was off
Too much sun, they say,
Really bends the mind
It’s what made her stutter
85. X
When it’s quick it’s something else
When it’s slow it’s in transition
You can wear it, on or off you
When you set it about with gaseous companions
It will fight the smallest wars for you.
91.
Though you wear silver in the winter
And gold in the fall,
And at times dress in azure,
And dance in fog over all,
And paint your face red, scorning law,
And illuminate the stage white
When you sit in your ivory stall--
A phase you’re going through.
92.
A bird sings freedom only once
Before being crushed
And thrown back--
An example to the rest.
93.
She’s a monarch of shovels;
Her kingdom is cardboard.
But of fifty-two people,
She rules only eleven others,
Unless her husband and herself
Are under her own power.
Then she rules thirteen.
94.
A perfect metaphor for love:
The sweet smell.
But if you grab and squeeze,
The blood’ll run down your wrist,
A spiral bracelet along your arm.
And the leaves are too small
To stop the bleeding
From all those triangle teeth.
95.
When I’m waiting, I’m a very religious man.
When I’m waiting, I’ll sway side to side.
When I’m waiting, I’m the perfect leaf.
When I’m waiting, I’m invisible.
Then I strike.
Sudden epiphany is the best way to solve a riddle. It’s when you look at it and say, “Oh, this must be the answer.” What interests me about this is that a riddle that I or maybe you or maybe him would never be able to solve is instantly clear to say her, or him, or that guy over there. Sometimes the answer is just clear to somebody without any sort of major thought and that is really interesting. It means we don’t all think alike. It means we have separate spheres of knowledge.
102.
I think I’ve seen him die a hundred times. Not a Christ figure, though he’s risen and born again among the mountains in poverty. Some say his coat is what kills him again and again. But I say it’s fate, or luck, or just his position in the story.
103.
Speaking of rising, here’s a thing that grows with heat, but get it too hot and it explodes before it is ready.
105.
A lady stands in the water, with her arm outstretched
It’s very strange to see such a noble figure
Get green with sick from the fresh air
116.
Crueler gods await for her
Cry and cry and cry and cry
And find a lady capable of mercy
Or none
125.
On an alien world with alien constellations and foreign sights and foreign stars, a tomb undisturbed for some time as a society collapsed around it sits undisturbed. The old gods are dead and no one knows how to open the tomb except what alien writing can reveal. Translated it says, “When circling orbs do pass there are two around their parent that do not shine, while none possesses an inner light, one must be in shadow and the other radiant, one must obscure the other, and where the light shines the door is open and the dead may walk again.”
136. X
I'll give you numbers on the hour
With some megahertz of power
I can poach her, I can be ripe
I can transmit at night.
There rest of the riddles are either too unfinished, shitty, or published to post. But fear not! I work on them in massive chunks usually between what I consider “serious” writing. There will be more.
-BookReader
1 Jan 2019 1:17 AM
Happy New Year, stælwirðe folcstedeas æf Everythingríce
A reQuest