Rigged Riddle

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Not fair! not fair! It isn't fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it's got in its nassty little pocketsess? —Gollum, The Hobbit

Riddle Me This: What kind of game do you never get the chance to play, because you've always lost before you've begun?

Answer: A Rigged Riddle.

Specifically, where most riddles may have more than one applicable answer and is more a straightforward test of knowledge and/or creative thinking, the Rigged Riddle relies on very specific information that the answering party could not (or rather should not) possibly know.

The riddle itself need not be completely impossible - just heavily unbalanced against whoever's being asked. This almost always involves information that only the one asking is privy to, and may even be personal info of some sort on their part, though it need not always be the case - the important part is that whatever they know, the one answering ideally shouldn't.

If they're especially unscrupulous, the riddle-maker will lead the unsuspecting party in one direction with the riddle, only for the answer to be something completely different. (Not to Be Confused With the other Something Completely Different.)

As such, overcoming this riddle requires a seriously sharp deductive mind to figure out the right angle to approach, let alone solve it outright - in some cases, it may seem like the answer was manufactured out of thin air. It may also warrant a wit capable of achieving the goal regardless of what the answer may be. While this is more than "just" a difficult riddle that the riddle-maker is confident cannot be answered, it's still possible for them to thoroughly underestimate the cunning of their target.

Rigged Riddles are often the domain of very powerful (or very spiteful) Riddling Sphinxes and Trickster Gods. Variations on the Knights and Knaves logic puzzle are a common type of Rigged Riddle, usually involving the reveal that the "knight" and "knave" are actually both liars.

It's possible for a Rigged Riddle to be benign, though—it may even be a hint towards a stranger's identity, or a way to fish out a duplicitous bystander.

The Shell Game is a related trope that's often similarly rigged against the "player".

Examples of Rigged Riddle include:

Anime and Manga

• Yu-Gi-Oh! has the Paradox Brothers ("Meikyū Brothers" in the English manga) attempt this after losing their duel against Yugi and Joey. Both brothers claim that one of the exits will let them leave the caves, while the other simply leads to an endless maze, before using the Knights and Knaves routine and challenging them to answer. Yugi realizes that both brothers are actually lying, and have the ability to change which path leads where—he successfully tricks this knowledge out of them using a Two-Headed Coin, allowing him and his friends to move forward.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V; Yuya's duel with Kyuando has a quiz show format, the Trap Cards involving trivia questions that the duelist must answer correctly. The hardest one requires Yuya to prove Fermat's Last Theorem in five seconds, which is impossible by any reasonable standard. Nonetheless, while Yuya knows he has no hope of answering it correctly, he still wins the duel by taking advantage of the Trap Card's negative effect.
  • In the dub, the Trap required him to instead recite pi to 100 decimal places - also impossible, but at least more viewers know what that is.

Comic Books

• The Riddler, alias Edward Nygma, naturally tends towards this type of riddle when he really wants to humiliate someone. His original origin story shows he used to be a carnival barker who challenged customers to solve a puzzle before he could, the puzzles having instructions printed on the pieces that only he could see using specially tinted glasses. Unfortunately for him, he often sets his sights on Batman, by whom he is frequently Out-Gambitted and humiliated. Bats ain't the World's Greatest Detective for nothin'.

Literature

• In The Hobbit, Bilbo asked Gollum “What have I got in my pocket?”, provoking the response serving as the page quote. The funny thing is, Bilbo was actually talking to himself when he said this - but Gollum interpreted it as part of their riddle game, and it is only after Gollum protested that Bilbo deliberately used it as the riddle.
  • Parodied in the prologue to Bored of the Rings, where what Dildo has in his pocket is a snub-nosed revolver, and the answer is to pull it out and empty it in the direction of Goddam.
• Alice in Wonderland subverts this. At the Mad Tea Party, the Hatter himself asks this perplexing question of Alice: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Once Alice gives up and asks for the answer, the Hatter reveals he has no idea himself - he was asking a genuine question.
  • Lewis Carroll admitted that he'd not thought of an answer himself, but readers proceeded to pester him so much on the matter that he eventually wrote one in a preface to a later edition of Wonderland: "because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!"
  • Noted nineteenth-century puzzle expert Sam Loyd devised his own answer: "because Poe wrote on both".
• Ulysses, the James Joyce Doorstopper, has Author Avatar Stephen Dedalus teaching a class on Roman history and pose a riddle to his students:

"The cock crew, The sky was blue: The bells in heaven Were striking eleven. ‘Tis time for this poor soul To go to heaven.

The answer? "The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush." Many scholars conclude that this is Joyce's way of poking run at riddles and the people who take them too seriously; Don Gifford explicitly notes this riddle in his article "The Cock Crew": An Answer to the Riddle as "unanswerable unless the answer is already known".

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths, Religion, and Legends

• Odin did this a couple of times in Norse Mythology - once in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (The Saga of Hervör and Heidrek), where a disguised Odin asked numerous riddles of King Heidrek, and again in the poem Vafþrúðnismál with Vafþrúðnir, who exchanged riddles with Odin. On both occasions, he used the same question: "What did Odin speak into Baldr’s ear before he was placed on the pyre?"
• The Bible's book of Judges has Samson tear apart a young lion on the way to wed his first wife (a Philistine woman); when he later came across the corpse, a beehive filled with honey was inside. Samson used that as the basis of a riddle: “Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.” This is one of the earliest examples of a Rigged Riddle that is "properly" formatted as a riddle, rather than a straightforward question with a secret answer. Samson offered a prize of 30 soft under shirts (sedin) and good suits (chalipha) to the winner. The Philistines present could not solve it and instead turned to Samson's first wife, who weaseled the answer out of him; Samson only realized the deception afterward, but resolved to make good on the bet - by traveling to Ashkelon and taking the clothes from the thirty Philistines he would murder there. This culminated in a divorce and set in motion a divinely-ordained series of escalating fights between Samson and the Philistines that would define the rest of his account.
• What is Rumpelstiltskin’s name? Indeed, the protagonist only guesses correctly because one of her messengers lucked out.

Tabletop Games

• In Dungeons and Dragons the gynosphinx is the type of sphinx that most resembles the Theben sphinx and has a similar MO, challenging passers-by with riddles and attacking whoever fails to answer. But some unscrupulous gynosphinxes have one they use if their hunger overcomes their pride:

My first is in Key, but isn't in Eye. My second's in Ill, but isn't in Lye. My next two are found in Lid, not Bird. And now we must pause and start a second word. My fifth is in May, but isn't in Say. My sixth is in He, but isn't in Hay. What phrase am I?

• The answer is "Kill Me", which is in effect giving the gynosphinx permission to attack - making the riddle a Morton's Fork, unless the would-be victim is smart enough to phrase it in a way that emphasizes they do not mean it as request.

• In Spelljammer, an astrosphinx is a malevolent and insane type of sphinx who asks riddles to anything it sees (even unintelligent animals and plants) and killing anything that refuses to answer or answers wrong. The riddles it poses seem to make no sense whatsoever (like "What is the speed of blue?" "How loud is down?" "What do a kobold and the Spelljammer have in common besides triangles?"), and they have been known to destroy all life on entire planets this way. Legend states that it is possible to answer one of these riddles correctly by giving equally-absurd answers, but the chance is slim (1% chance of success). Supposedly, if the astrosphinx's riddle is answered correctly, it will immolate itself in an explosion of burning lightning and leave behind a clue to the whereabouts of the Spelljammer itself.

Video Games

• The Riddler is especially guilty of this in the Arkham series of Batman games, where his riddling tendencies now include leaving trophies in specific locations and hiding question marks that can only be discovered via Detective Mode - the location of which serves as the "answer" to an associated riddle. His indignance at Batman's (and by proxy the player's) progress escalating to accusations of cheating as the Dark Knight overcomes his more difficult challenges in each game and eventually defeats him.
  • The interview tapes from Batman: Arkham Asylum have an example that perfectly demonstrates Nigma's Smug Snake personality in his take on the famous Riddle of the Sphinx. This being Arkham, and Nigma being Nygma, his version is... a little mean-spirited, to say the least.

Dr. Young: Patient interview 21. Patient's name is Edward Nigma, also known as the Riddler. So, Edward. Warden Sharp tells me you've been leaving threatening riddles scrawled on the asylum walls, again. Riddler: One would have to be severely paranoid to read threats into harmless riddles, Doctor Young. May I test you with one? Dr. Young: Very well. Riddler: What is it that walks on four legs, then two legs, and finally three legs? Dr. Young: A human being. As a baby it crawls on four legs, as an adult it walks around on two and in later years it uses a cane. Riddler: (laughs) Good try, but the answer to all three is a baby. True, it crawls on all fours, but cut off its legs and it can only wiggle on two limbs. Give it a crutch, it can hobble around on three. You see? Dr. Young: That's horrible. How can you even joke about that? Riddler: Easily, Doctor. It’s not my baby.

• Also particularly evident in Batman: Arkham City when Batman rescues one of his hostages: using Detective Vision on the Shell Game-style trap they're contained in reveals a mechanism designed to swap their position without its viewer noticing.

• In Planescape: Torment, Raviel Puzzlewell's riddle was "What can change the nature of a man?" Most who tried to answer failed and became her slaves forever, but the answer the Nameless One gave ("regret") seemed to be correct, resulting in her granting his wish to be immortal - which he now views as a curse. When encountered in the present day, Raviel admits this riddle has no true definite answer, but the Nameless One passed her test because the answer he gave was the answer he sincerely believed was true, rather than the most "right". Reflecting this, many fans of the game have debated what a "true" answer might be, with even the common answers being as various as "time", "love" and "nothing".
  • Further emphasizing Raviel's point, the Nameless One came to doubt his answer and in turn posed the question to several people he met in his numerous lives. His final interpretation is:

Nameless One: If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me.

• In Monster Girl Quest, Sphinx Girl's third riddle is this, but due to Gameplay and Story Integration, it can be solved. Sphinx asks, "Why are you taking this trial?" Two of Luka's options are, "Because I got roped into it" (an honest answer, but incorrect) and "For love and peace!" (Clearly a lie, and also incorrect.) Seeing as Luka has no way of knowing the answer (because he came here for another reason and "got roped into it") he cannot answer, but he can ask Sara to answer for him, and she does indeed give Sphinx the right answer.

Western Animation

• In The Powerpuff Girls episode “Power-Noia”, HIM tries to fool Blossom with this version of the Train Problem: "If a train leaves Boston at 12:30 PM traveling at 70 miles per hour and another train leaves Los Angeles at the same time traveling at 90 miles per hour, which one will get to Cuba first?" Blossom quickly realizes the answer is neither: Cuba is an island in the Gulf of Mexico, and cannot be reached by train.
• In Riddler’s first appearance in The Batman, Nygma challenges Detective Yin and Batman (whom he realized has been helping Detective Yin) to a series of riddles that seem deceptively easy, claiming she must solve them to defuse several bomb. But his last riddle is: "A man builds a house where all four sides face north. A bear walks by the house. What color is the bear?" This is a variation on the original riddle, which uses “south” rather than north - the answer would be “white”, as the house could only be at the North Pole where polar bear habitats are found. In this case, the house would be at the South Pole, and there are no bears in Antarctica - the riddle has no answer, and is intended to keep Detective Yin and and Batman occupied while he robs the bank where the first riddle was. Of course, Batman is keenly aware of the Riddler's obsession with planting riddles within riddles, and figures this out in time to stop him.