Riddles are Bad and Math Puzzles are Better

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

This riddle, meant to be unanswerable, has an answer. It has many answers. Here’s one: “Poe wrote on both.”

Herein lies the problem with the riddle-type question. They are often so open-ended that they can warrant multiple answers. I’ll give a few more examples.

“You can see me in water, but I never get wet. What am I?”

The answer is a reflection. But, for example, shadows work just as well. In fact, they fit the riddle even better, since they are actually visible inside of water, instead of just on the surface.

“What has a heart but no organs?”

The answer is a deck of cards. Yet there exist many things that could have hearts. Ever heard the phrase “heart of the city”? It usually refers to city centers. And what about “the heart of darkness”?

“What has holes but holds water?”

A sponge. But there are so many other things that satisfy this riddle. For example, a towel. It’s basically the case for anything that experiences capillary action.

The absolute worst kinds of riddles are the “what happened?” type. Typically escape or death, the riddle lays out a situation and asks you for the events that led up to it. For example,

“Two dead bodies were found laying next to a broken glass. How did they die?”

The answer, by the way, is that the dead bodies were those of goldfish. Their fishbowl broke, hence the glass, and the fish suffocated. But one can come up with many situations that would fit.

What if the bodies were human like were we led to believe, and they committed suicide, and the poison took hold too quickly, and they fell on the glass? This is one that a peer came up with, and that I thought was reasonable, but was not accepted as the “correct” answer.

Riddles are often associated with intelligence and cleverness. They are supposed to be elegant. That’s why, in old tales, protagonists get challenged with riddles. And they are considered clever or smart after solving them.

And it is true that the accepted answer for these riddles are pretty clever. There’s always some sort of trick associated with them, and when you think of it, something “clicks” in your head.

The problem is that there is no good way to describe that “click”, to describe why it is so superior to any other answers. And that is the problem with riddles. There is nothing separating the correct answer from an equally valid one.

Compare with mathematical puzzles, where there is only one correct answer. And while half the fun is in finding the answer itself, another half is all about finding the fastest or most elegant solution.

So while you may think that math questions are more restrictive than traditional riddles, the truth is that the general populace will only accept one answer to a riddle, regardless of how fitting any of your answers are.

On the other hand, math problems may only have one answer, but math people are interested in the process by which you came to your solution. Mathematical games and puzzles are truly more open, free, and fun than riddles, despite math’s cold and sterile reputation.