Clues That Play Fair

The Tradition of the Fair Enigma

In literary history, few documents rival the ancient Exeter Book—a tenth-century codex preserved in Exeter Cathedral containing nearly one hundred Old English verse riddles. In these verses, shields mourn their scars from blades, storm clouds bellow across winter pastures, and common garden onions boast of making strong warriors weep.

What distinguishes these venerable texts from trivial "catch questions" is poetic integrity. The poet provides genuine properties: weight, texture, sound, and purpose. When the reader untangles the personification, every single line reconciles flawlessly with reality.

Centuries later, when Lewis Carroll posed the Mad Hatter's tea party riddle in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"—he originally intended it as a nonsense conundrum without an answer. However, readers demanded fair play so vigorously that Carroll eventually crafted solutions, including: "Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!"