Riddles are great for all ages and all skill levels. The answers may be on the tip of your tongue while others will require a little extra time to figure out. You can find more riddle fun with our Disney Riddles and Space Riddles. Why I love Riddles Fell, Christine (2007). "Perceptions of Transience". In Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. pp.172–89. ISBN 978-0-521-37794-2. Nicholas Perkins spoke to Dr Harriet Soper (Lincoln College, Oxford) about these riddles. Listen to their conversation: Q: What listens, yet tells? A: Writing a book. A book listens as you write, and tells your story when read.

This selection is from the Exeter Book, a manuscript written late in the tenth century CE. It was bequeathed to the monastery at Exeter in Devon by a bishop called Leofric in 1072, and is still in the cathedral library there. In Leofric’s will, it’s described as ‘one big English book about various things, composed in poetry’. It’s one of the great treasures of English literature, containing many beautiful and haunting poems which demonstrate the rich culture of Anglo-Saxon (pre-Conquest) England. It includes about a hundred riddles, some being versions of Latin riddles ( aenigmata). Andy Orchard (ed. and trans.), The Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 69 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021); accompanied by Andy Orchard, A Commentary on the Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition, Supplements to the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2021). Gollancz, Israel (1894). The Exeter book. [23] Early English Text Society, Original series, Volume 104, 194.Q: I sit here collecting dust, I can wait forever to open me and you will not be disappointed, I can make you laugh, cry, and sad, I contain all the knowledge of the world, let me take you to a faraway land. Helen Price, 'Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), esp. ch. 2; http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/6607/; https://www.academia.edu/6827866.

Crossley-Holland, Kevin (1982). The Anglo-Saxon World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953871-3. Anthology of Old English poetry and prose, featuring poems from the Exeter Book. Williamson, Craig (1977), The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, pp.3–28, ISBN 0-8078-1272-2

Creative Play

What are these texts? They’re riddles in Old English. In some an object speaks about itself (a technique known by the Greek word prosopopoeia), while others are told by an observer, marvelling at the strangeness of the thing they’re describing. These riddles invite us to search for meaning, play with words, and take pleasure in an eventual recognition. Sometimes the solution is obvious, sometimes ridiculous, but along the way they investigate the natural world and its transformations; a whole spectrum of emotions; gender and hierarchy; the power of language; death and what comes after; and the lives of objects – not to mention jokes about sex. Q:There were 5 children in a room. Iris drew a picture, Barry played video games, Andrew played chess, and Trina read a book. What is the fifth child, Mindy, doing? A: Mindy is playing chess with Andrew. You can’t play chess alone!

a b c d e Johnson, Keith (2016). "7.1 Manuscript collections". The History of Early English. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781317636069. In this book you'll find a whole host of amazing riddles. Some will get you head scratching, some will make you laugh, and all are a lot of fun. Q: My life is often a volume of grief, your help is needed to turn a new leaf. Stiff is my spine and my body is pale, but I’m always ready to tell a tale.While the Exeter Book was found in a cathedral library, and while it is clear that religious scribes worked on the riddles, not all of the riddles in the book are religiously themed. Many of the answers to the riddles are everyday, common objects. There are also many double entendres, which can lead to an answer that is obscene. One example of this is Riddle 23/25: Marsden, Richard (2015), The Cambridge Old English Reader (2nded.), doi: 10.1017/CBO9781107295209, ISBN 9781107295209