Why did the chicken cross the road?

This is the first in a series of posts exploring the "meta" riddle: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Let's get started with just a few of the many answers to this traditional form of the riddle. Which ones do you like best, and why? Looking at these answers is a way for you to think about the forms of riddling that you like best... because this is definitely a riddle with many different answers! (July 1: I just added two more!)

• To get to the other side.
• The grass was greener on the other side.
• Because she was a free range chicken
• Because the light was green.
• Because the road was too long to walk around it.
• Beak-cause she could.
• To BOCK traffic. Bock! Bock!
• Because she thought it was an EGG-cellent idea.
• Because she saw what you did with her eggs.
• Because she wanted to understand what all the jokes were about.
• To knock-knock on the door, walk into the bar, and change the light bulb.
• Because this is AMERICA! The chicken can go where it wants.
• To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

ccc

I don't know but...

Some more animal-cross riddles, and this time the answer each time is "I don't know what it's called, but..."

What do you get when you cross a shark with a crocodile?

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I don't know what it's called, but don't get in the water with it!

What do you get when you cross a tiger with a parrot?

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I don't know what it's called, but if it wants a cracker, you'd better give it a cracker.

What do you get when you cross a gambler with an octopus?

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I don't know what it's called, but it sure can play a lot of hands of poker.

What do you get when you cross a gorilla with a porcupine?

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I don't know what it's called, but it won't have trouble getting a seat on the bus.

What do you get when you cross a canary with a lion?

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I don't know what it's called, but when it sings you had better listen.

Numbers in the Dictionary

The "in-the-dictionary" riddle type is one of my favorites, and it is easy to make up examples with numbers. Plus it's good practice for both math AND spelling to make up your own riddles like this! Here are a few to get you started... and you don't really need to reveal the answer, because it's the same answer every time: IN THE DICTIONARY!

When does three come AFTER eight?

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In the dictionary.

When does seven come BEFORE six?

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In the dictionary.

When does eleven come BEFORE ten?

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In the dictionary.

When does eight come BEFORE four?

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In the dictionary.

Two is greater than one; three is greater than two; four is greater than three. But where does four come BEFORE one and two and three?

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In the dictionary.

Day Riddles

To answer these riddles, think about the days of the week, and other ways that we talk about time!

What have you seen and everyone you know has seen but nobody will not see again?

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Yesterday.

When can Friday come before Thursday?

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In the dictionary.

What four days of the week start with T?

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Tuesday, Thursday, today, tomorrow.

A cowboy rode into town on Friday, stayed two nights, and left on Friday. How could that be?

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The cowboy's horse was named Friday.

Name three consecutive days without mentioning Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.

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Yesterday, today, tomorrow.

What do you get when you cross...

Here are some more animal-cross riddles!

What do you get when you cross a cow with an octopus?

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An animal that can milk itself.

What do you get when you cross a sheep with a porcupine?

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An animal that knits its own sweaters.

What do you get when you cross a hyena with a parrot?

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An animal that laughs at its own jokes.

What do you get when you cross an owl with an oyster?

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An animal that produces pearls of wisdom.

What do you get when you cross a rooster with a giraffe?

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An animal that wakes people on the top floor.

Latin Nursery Rhyme: Ille citharistae filius

This is another one of the Latin nursery rhymes that I found in Arundines Cami, published in 1851. It's a Latin rendition of the classic English nursery rhyme:

Toм, Tom, the piper's son,

Stole a pig, and away he run:

The pig was eat, and Tom was beat,

And Tom ran crying down the street.

While the rhymes are not as good in the Latin, there is a brilliant pun which more than makes up for it: fur it! furit!

This is not quantitative meter; instead it follows the 4-beat rhythms of the English, which occasionally violates the normal Latin word accent, but that happens in some English rhymes too. I've underlined the beats:

Ille citharistae filius,

Thomas, Thomas nominatus,

Porculo surrepto, currit:

Porcus cito manducatus,

Thomas, cito verberatus,

Ululans per vicum fur it,

Ululans per vicum furit.

Here's an English translation :-)

The cithara-player's son

Thomas, Thomas named,

The pig having been stolen, he runs.

The pig quickly eaten,

Thomas, quickly beaten,

Yelling, the thief goes through the street

Yelling, he rages through the street.

illustrations by Walter Crane

Elephants!

Here are some elephant jokes for you to try:

What animal can jump higher than an elephant?

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Any animal that can jump... because elephants don't jump.

What’s the difference between a donut and an elephant?

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You can't dip an elephant in your coffee.

What do you get when you cross a herd of elephants with a school of fish?

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Swimming trunks.

How do you know when there's an elephant under your bed?

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Your nose touches the ceiling.

If you saw nine elephants walking down your street wearing red socks, and one wearing blue socks, what would this prove?

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That 9 out of 10 elephants wear red socks.

What do you get when you cross...?

Here are some what-do-you-get-when-you-cross riddles... and they all feature animals!

What do you get when you cross a cat with a lemon?

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A sour-puss.

What do you get when you cross a chicken with a bell?

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An alarm-cluck.

What do you get when you cross a daddy-long-legs with a parrot?

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A walkie-talkie.

What do you get when you cross a duck with the desert?

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Quack-sand.

What do you get when you cross a kangaroo with a snake?

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A jump-rope.

Letter Riddles

I've shared some riddlebees already, in which each line gives you the clue you need to find a letter, and then you put those letters together to find the answer.  Similarly, there riddles where the answer is a single letter. Sometimes the clue is just a single sentence, but sometimes they are long clues, as you can see in the selection below:

What occurs once in a second, once in a minute, twice annually, but never in February?

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The letter N.

You can see me twice in any day, but not once in the morning or in the night.

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I am the letter A.

You'll see me in New York and New Orleans, and I'm in the middle of every crowd; you'll never find me on the beach, but I'm in every ocean. Who am I?

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I am the letter O.

What can you always find in the middle of nowhere?

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The letter H.

I'm always in a hurry, and you can see me but not hear me in a fight. Who am I?

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I am the letter H.

The gust of the wildest storm I can change to a welcome guest; in the North or the South, I'm unknown, but am found in the East and the West.

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The letter E.

More Puzzle Stories from the Jewish Tradition

I picked out my favorite story from While Standing on One Foot: Puzzle Stories and Wisdom Tales From the Jewish Tradition by Nina Jaffe and Steve Zeitlin (available for borrowing at the Internet Archive) and wrote up my version: The Rabbi and the Grand Inquisitor. I'm going to limit my readers theater this summer to one piece at most per book, but I wanted to note here some of the other stories that I really liked in this particular book:

• The Leviathan and the Fox. This is a brilliant adaptation of the global folktale best known as the story of The Monkey's Heart, often told about a monkey and a crocodile, although all different kinds of animal characters can be substitute, as here with Fox (the trickster) and Leviathan (sea beast)
• The Case of the Boiled Egg. This is a European (and beyond?) story about someone claiming future fortune lost because of the destruction of an egg (it can also be told about livestock, etc.). It is set up here as a story of King David and his young son Solomon as the puzzle-solver.
• Last Wish. Another widely known story about letting a condemned man choose how he wants to die, so he chooses old age. This version features a jester in the court of the Babylonian king.
• The Liar at the Gate. A well known Middle Eastern (and beyond) paradoxical fable about a king vows to hang any man who lies. This version is set in Morocco.
• The Princess in the Mirror. Famous dilemma tale with flying carpet, magical mirror, and healing apple (from Garden of Eden no less!). The princess chooses the suitor with the apple because the apple could be used only once, and he used it for her.
• One-Legged Goose. This famous story is told of Hershel of Ostropol.
• Botched Riddle. This takes the riddle, "I am my father's son, but I am not my brother," and has the fools of Chelm botch the answer.
• Even My Coachman. A story about the coachman pretending to be a wise man.
• (The Man Who Was a Rooster. Not exactly a puzzle story, although I really like it: you can act like a man and still be a rooster!)
• Sukkah. A clever modern story about a judicial decision that satisfies both parties by allowing a long term for the sentence to be carried out: as long as the holiday!
• Bird in the Hand. I was amazed to see this old Aesop's fable told about Hitler youth persecuting a Jewish man (but apparently this is an invention by Jaffe and Zeitlin; it doesn't look like this was the way the story was told to them).

The Rabbi of Seville and the Grand Inquisitor

I wrote a post earlier about riddle-tale books that I want to use as a source for readers theater. I'm starting with While Standing on One Foot: Puzzle Stories and Wisdom Tales From the Jewish Tradition by Nina Jaffe and Steve Zeitlin, which is available for borrowing at the Internet Archive. 

There are so many good stories in this book, and my favorite of all is actually the very first story: The Grand Inquisitor. This is a story from Spain, where tens of thousands of Jewish people were killed in pogroms in the late 14th century. In the 15th century, Jewish people were forced to leave the country. Those who converted to Catholicism, the conversos, remained, but they were persecuted by the "Grand Inquisition," and thousands more were executed on the charge of practicing Judaism in secret. Only in 2015 did the Spanish government pass a law granting dual citizenship rights for Jews with Spanish ancestry, in an effort to correct what the government called a "historic mistake" of sending Jews into exile, forcing them to convert to Catholicism or burning them at the stake. (Details here.) 

Jaffe and Zeitlin cite as their source A Treasury of Jewish Folklore by Nathan Ausubel, which is also available at the Internet Archive. This version of the story is explicit about the crime: the rabbi is accused of killing a Christian boy and using his blood to bake Passover matzos. For more about this "blood libel" tradition, see Wikipedia.

As you'll see, this is a "puzzle" type of riddle story, where a quick-witted hero uses logic to solve a puzzle... and save his life! For more about this type of legal story in the Jewish tradition, see "The Coiled Serpent of Argument: Reason, Authority, and Law in a Talmudic Tale" by David Luban, in the Chicago-Kent Law Review, 79:3 (2004).

Below is my version of the story, as inspired by reading the version in Jaffe and Zeitlin's book. 

~ ~ ~

The story is set in Seville, where the Grand Inquisitor charged the Rabbi of Seville with a terrible crime.

"But I am innocent of this crime!" protested the rabbi. 

"God will declare who is guilty and who is innocent," declared the Grand Inquisitor. "I am putting two pieces of paper in this box: one piece of paper says "guilty" and other says "innocent." You will choose a piece of paper, guided by the hand of God. Then we shall see who is guilty!" 

But the Grand Inquisitor wanted to make sure that the rabbi would be found guilty, so he had written "guilty" on both slips of paper. No matter which piece of paper the rabbi pulled from the box, it would say "guilty." The Grand Inquisitor was leaving nothing to chance, or to God!

But the rabbi knew just what he had to do. Can you guess what he did? How was the rabbi able to escape from the trap laid by the Grand Inquisitor?

Think about that for a minute, and then read the rest of the story.

"I thank you, O Grand Inquisitor," said the rabbi, "for putting the decision in the hands of God." Then, when the Grand Inquisitor offered him the box, the rabbi pulled out a piece of paper, and.... swallowed it! 

When he realized what the rabbi had done, the Grand Inquisitor shouted, "What have you done? How dare you defy the court like this! Now we will never know what paper you drew from the box."

"But I was doing only what I was guided to do by the hand of God," replied the rabbi. "And there is still a way to know what was written on the paper: just remove the other paper from the box. If the paper says "innocent," then I must have swallowed the paper that says "guilty," and I stand condemned. But if the paper in the box says "guilty," then I must have swallowed the paper that says "innocent," and so I will go free."

And of course you know what happened: the Grand Inquisitor drew forth the paper from the box. "Guilty" said the paper. Which meant the rabbi was found innocent, and the court had to let him go.

Did you figure out the rabbi's plan, or did he surprise you? Maybe you even thought of a different way for the rabbi to escape from the trap: riddles sometimes have more than one answer after all.

More about the old Jewish Quarter of Seville

Animal Riddlebees

See if you can solve these riddlebees!

My first is in fish and also in chips;
my second's in mouth but not in lips;
my third is in ache but not in pain;
my fourth is my third all over again;
my fifth is in pupil but isn't in class;
my whole is a beast that feeds on the grass.
Who am I?

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sheep

My first is in coat but not in hat;
My second's in paw but not in cat;
My third you find in both lumpy and flat.
Who am I?

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owl

My first is in both locks and keys;
My second is in waves, not seas;
My third is in both rain and damp;
My fourth is in train but not in tramp.
Who am I?

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swan

Riddle Tales / Readers Theater

I'll be doing a Readers Theater workshop in July as part of the MYFest project sponsored by the great people at Equity Unbound, and this will be the fifth year (!) that we are doing readers theater! We started back in 2022 just as an experiment, and we've done it every year since then. You can see some of our scripts here: Scripts.LauraGibbs.net. I hope to be doing a lot of work with readers theater this year, including plays in Latin (that is something new for me)... and the reason I am writing about all this here is because I decided to choose riddle tales as the theme for our readers theater this summer!

I think that will be a great choice, because riddle tales offer a wonderful opportunity for audience involvement, which is the goal of readers theater. Can the audience guess the riddle on their own? Or will they have to wait and see what happens? I really like the idea that the play's narrator can challenge the audience that way in the flow of the events, giving them some time to think and ponder on their own to see what they can figure out. The goal is not to shout out the answer, though, because you don't want to spoil the ending for people who haven't figure it out (yet). Instead, the goal is just to pause and let the audience know that they might be able to guess the answer on their own! And the narrator can even nudge them with clues and hints, the way that riddles can have clues and hints too, not just a "gotcha!" answer.

So, to get ready to do this, I rounded up what books I could find that feature riddle tales. This is what I found: please let me know if you have other suggestions to add to the list! The items in bold are linked to the Internet Archive where they are available for borrowing, and I am pleased to say that all but 2 of the books are available!

1. Abrahams, Roger. Between the Living and the Dead. (A folkloric index of over 400 riddles that tell stories; this is the only book on the list that is not a book for young readers.)
2. Dundas, Marjorie. Riddling Tales from Around the World.
3. Jaffe, Nina and Steve Zeitlin. The Cow of No Color: Riddle Stories and Justice Tales from Around the World.
4. Jaffe, Nina and Steve Zeitlin. While Standing on One Foot: Puzzles Stories and Wisdom Tales from the Jewish Tradition.
5. Mbe, Taffy Thomas. The Riddle in the Tale.
6. Shannon, George. Stories to Solve.
7. Shannon, George. More Stories to Solve.
8. Shannon, George. Still More Stories to Solve. 
9. Shannon, George. True Lies: Tales for You to Judge.
10. Shannon, George. More True Lies.

Here are some of the books with their lovely covers, and I'll be writing up blog posts about each one as I go looking for riddle tales that lend themselves to readers theater!

Pons Antiquus

Today I decided to translate the "London Bridge Is Falling Down" nursery rhyme into Latin. Some of you may know only the first few lines of this rhyme; when I was little, that was all I ever heard. But it is actually a really great chain-tale nursery rhyme, so before you read the Latin, you might want to read this English version (there are lots of different versions!):

London Bridge is falling down,

Falling down, falling down.

London Bridge is falling down,

My fair lady.

London Bridge is broken down,

Broken down, broken down.

London Bridge is broken down,

My fair lady.

Build it up with wood and clay,

Wood and clay, wood and clay,

Build it up with wood and clay,

My fair lady.

Wood and clay will wash away,

Wash away, wash away,

Wood and clay will wash away,

My fair lady.

Build it up with bricks and mortar,

Bricks and mortar, bricks and mortar,

Build it up with bricks and mortar,

My fair lady.

Bricks and mortar will not stay,

Will not stay, will not stay,

Bricks and mortar will not stay,

My fair lady.

Build it up with iron and steel,

Iron and steel, iron and steel,

Build it up with iron and steel,

My fair lady.

Iron and steel will bend and bow,

Bend and bow, bend and bow,

Iron and steel will bend and bow,

My fair lady.

Build it up with silver and gold,

Silver and gold, silver and gold,

Build it up with silver and gold,

My fair lady.

Silver and gold will be stolen away,

Stolen away, stolen away,

Silver and gold will be stolen away,

My fair lady.

Set a man to watch all night,

Watch all night, watch all night,

Set a man to watch all night,

My fair lady.

Suppose the man should fall asleep,

Fall asleep, fall asleep,

Suppose the man should fall asleep?

My fair lady.

Give him a pipe to smoke all night,

Smoke all night, smoke all night,

Give him a pipe to smoke all night,

My fair lady.

from Walter Crane's Baby's Bouquet

Writing my Latin version, I didn't stick to the exact words, but I followed the same pattern, although I made mine circular! I'm pretty proud of that; circular chain-tales are my favorites.

Pons antiquus labitur

Labitur labitur.

Pons antiquus labitur:

Quid faciemus?

Lignum mox supponatur, 

Suponatur supponatur.

Lignum mox supponatur

Ut pons servetur!

Lignum non est stabile,

Stabile stabile.

Lignum non est stabile:

Quid faciemus?

Saxa etiam addantur,

Addantur addantur.

Saxa etiam addantur

Ut pons servetur!

Saxa raptim labentur

Labentur labentur.

Saxa raptim labentur:

Quid faciemus?

Argillam tunc addemus, 

Addemus addemus.

Argillam tunc addemus, 

Ut pons servetur!

Aqua eam rapiet

Rapiet rapiet.

Aqua eam rapiet:

Quid faciemus?

Auro ergo utamur,

Utamur utamur.

Auro ergo utamur,

Ut pons servetur!

Fures aurum rapient, 

Rapient rapient.

Fures aurum rapient:

Quid faciemus?

Vigilemus noctibus,

Noctibus noctibus.

Vigilemus noctibus

Ut pons servetur!

Nunc dormire volumus,

Volumus volumus.

Nunc dormire volumus:

Quid faciemus?

Dormiamus diebus

Diebus diebus.

Dormiamus diebus

Ut pons servetur!

Oculos nunc claudimus

Claudimus claudimus.

Oculos nunc claudimus

Ut dormiamus!

Nos in somnum labimur

Labimur labimur.

Nos in somnum labimur:

Dormimus omnes!

Here's a literal translation of the Latin:

The old bridge is slipping...

    Pons antiquus labitur...

What are we going to do?

    Quid faciemus?

Quickly wood should be placed below...

    Lignum mox supponatur...

In order to save the bridge!

    Ut pons servetur!

The wood is not stable...

    Lignum non est stabile,

    

Rocks should also be added...

    Saxa etiam addantur...

The rocks will suddenly slide...

    Saxa raptim labentur...

Then let us add clay...

    Argillam tunc addemus...

The water will carry it away...

    Aqua eam rapiet...

Therefore let us use gold...

    Auro ergo utamur... 

Thieves will steal the gold...

    Fures aurum rapient...

Let us keep watch by night...

    Vigilemus noctibus...!

Now we want to sleep...

    Nunc dormire volumus...

Let us sleep by day...

    Dormiamus diebus...

We are closing our eyes now...

    Oculos nunc claudimus...

We are slipping into sleep...

    Nos in somnum labimur...

We are all sleeping!

    Dormimus omnes!