Riddle Me This

Always Take the Third Option.

If be it your hubby,
wish you to see,
this haunting be-riddle
answer you'll me!

— Riddler's Gammon, by Andrew Hussie

When Only Smart People May Pass, a challenge is often given in the form of a Riddle. The solution to said riddle is often, in itself, the means by which the characters may continue. (Unless the characters are Genre Savvy, in which case it may turn into Only the Knowledgable May Pass.)

This sort of riddle game is sometimes also used for other purposes than determining whether someone may pass. For example, it may be for a reward of an item or information.

Sub Tropes include Riddling Sphinx (the tendency of sphinxes to do this), Riddle of the Sphinx (a particular riddle that's very popular) and These Questions Three... (combining this trope with the Rule of Three). See also the sister trope Life-or-Death Question, which is when the same trope is simply a question (or multiple questions), and not a riddle.

No relation to the comedy podcast Answer Me This.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• In Pokémon: The Original Series (specifically, the aptly-named episode "Riddle Me This"), Blaine uses riddles to guide travelers to his holdings—an inn and his volcano-based gym.
• In Witch Hat Atelier, the golden people of the ancient city of Romonneau offer to let Tetia, Qifrey, and Coco pass if the students could answer a riddle. The answer is "Peace". Magic took away the peace they had, leaving them with bodies that were always cold and uncomfortable.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • This is the standard MO of the Riddler, the Trope Namer. Depending on the Writer, it could be a game he plays, or it could be an outright psychotic compulsion he feels he has to play.
    "Riddle me this... riddle me that... who's afraid of the big, black Bat?"
  • Cluemaster started out with a similar MO, leaving little clues at his crime scenes, until he was caught and sent to Arkham. The doctors there were actually able to cure him... of his compulsion to leave clues. It figures the one time the shrinks there can do their job, it makes a criminal tougher to catch.
  • The Joker — considering his many Depending on the Writer interpretations — also occasionally will leave "riddles", although they are more like jokes where Batman has to figure out the (usually lame) punch-line.
• In Laff-A-Lympics, the three teams are tasked with locating a ceramic purple pig to win back the charity money the gambler Lucky Starr won from the event treasurer. Starr bets a load on the Rottens to find it first and to hedge his bet he has minions make sure the Rottens find the clues first. The Rottens have the clues but are clueless as to solving it. Super Snooper of the Yogi Yahooeys figures it out: the trick is where the clues were found. (The purple pig was in Captain Caveman's club.)
• King Loki plays this with Balder in issue #14 of Loki: Agent of Asgard:
  King!Loki: Answer my riddle and I'll be on my way. I'm best known for spreading kisses, and yet none dare to place their lips on me,^note mistletoe is poisonous and I kill what I cling tight to.^note Mistletoe is parasitic and kills the trees it grows on. Who am I?
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW), the final door in Queen Chrysalis' castle will only open if one of the characters answers a riddle.
  Chrysalis: ...How is a Pegasus like a writing desk? Can you answer this riddle?
  Pinkie: Nope! I can't answer it!

Fairy Tales

• "The Wise Little Girl": The Tsar challenges both siblings to solve the next riddle: "What were the swiftest, fattest, softest, and loveliest things in the world?". The rich man's godmother answers are her husband's bay mare, a pig that they had been fattening, eiderdown, and her baby nephew. The poor man's daughter's answers are: "Tell the Emperor that the fastest thing in the world is the cold north wind in winter. The fattest is the soil in our fields whose crops give life to men and animals alike, the softest thing is a child's caress and the most precious is honesty."

Fan Works

• The Calvin & Hobbes: The Series episode "Eggs for Calvin!" has Calvin on a timed Easter egg hunt wherein each of the eggs contains a clue to where the next one is.

Film - Live-Action

• The Director's cut of Legend (1985) has Gump ask Jack this riddle: What is a bell that never rings, yet its knell makes the angels sing? Answer:A bluebell. To hear it ring means that your life is at an end.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail parodied this trope:
  Bridge Keeper: What is your name?
  Lancelot: My name is Sir Lancelot of Camelot.
  Bridge Keeper: What is your quest?
  Lancelot: To seek the Holy Grail.
  Bridge Keeper: What is your favourite colour?
  Lancelot: Blue.
  Bridge Keeper: Right, off you go.
  • Sir Robin wasn't so lucky. Same questions until the third.
    Bridge Keeper: What is the capital of Assyria?
    Robin: Wh- I don't know that! *Tossed into the chasm below*
  • Sir Galahad got the favourite colour question, but still managed to get it wrong.
  • And rounding it off was King Arthur himself, who was asked "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
    Arthur: What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
    Bridge Keeper: W... I don't know th- *Tossed into the chasm below*
• The St. Ives Puzzle was used by a villain this way in Die Hard with a Vengeance. The hero got the right answer, but not within the time limit; fortunately, there was no bomb because the villain did not say "Simon Says".
• Asterix: Asterix & Obelix Take On Caesar has the titular characters solve two riddles by an old druid to gain an ingredient to win against the romans.
  Patriarchix: A beggar had a brother, this brother is dead, but he never had a brother while still alive. Why?

  Asterix: The beggar is a woman.
  • Interestingly, while the comics constantly made clear that Asterix is the smartest in the village, the last riddle is solved by Obelix.
  Patriarchix: I have no brother and no sister, but the son of this man is the son of my father. Who is it?
  Obelix: My father.

Literature

• Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest: The gargoyle guarding the entrance into the NQB asks Troy and Helen to answer a riddle before allowing them passage because he was created to do so or kill them should they not give him the answer. He asks "Men seek me out, yet fear what I have to say. I am unavoidable, yet always surprising. All travelers meet me, regardless of which road they travel, and even if they choose not to travel at all. I am a burden to many, a joy to a very few, and something only a fool thinks he can know. What am I?" The answer — "destiny" — was actually spoiled by the business card Neil Waechter gave Helen and Troy the day before.
• In The Hobbit Gollum challenged Bilbo to a riddle contest. Famously, Bilbo's final "riddle" is actually a question: "What have I got in my pocket?" Gollum protests that it shouldn't count, but goes for it anyway (demanding three guesses); the book itself wonders if it's fair, concluding that since Gollum tried to guess the answer anyway, it passes. Also, he demands three guesses but then guesses four things. What did Bilbo have in his pocket? The Ring.
  • Parodied in Bored of the Rings, with the same same question asked, but a wildly different right answer: a "snub-nosed .38 pistol", which is then unloaded at the riddling opponent.
  • Also parodied in The Soddit, where Sollum's "riddles" are philosophical conundrums, and Bingo's are terrible jokes which he screws up anyway.
• Then a subversion in The Lord of the Rings, where the Fellowship thinks this is the way to open the door to the mines of Moria, but it turns out they're seriously overthinking it.
• In Larry Niven and Steven Barnes' novel Dream Park, three of the PCs must compete in a riddle-game against a representative of "the Gods" to save the life of their Loremaster. Since the Loremaster is the group leader, and they have little chance of surviving without him, the stakes are pretty high.
• Harry Potter
  • The entrance to the Ravenclaw common room, unlike those of the other Houses, requires students to answer a riddle rather than give a password to enter.
  • In Goblet of Fire, Harry encounters a sphinx in the final maze and manages to solve its riddle (which is a simple word puzzle rather than the Riddle of the Sphinx).
• The key to unlock the way into (or perhaps it was out of, it's been a while since the source if this reference read it) a secret tunnel in the tenth A Series of Unfortunate Events novel, The Slippery Slope.
• Blaine, the Ax-Crazy monorail from The Dark Tower, challenged his passengers to a riddle contest. They had to win or else he would kill them. Subverted when the heroes win by asking it nonsense jokes that fry its brain.
• In The Last Watch, Merlin left a riddle to any others who sought the Crown of All Things.
• An extreme version of this trope appeared in the original novel version of The Neverending Story when Atreyu came to the first of the three gates barring him from the Oracle Uyulala, which was a pair of sphinx-like statues that sat facing each other. The gnome researcher Engywook explained that if the sphinxes opened their eyes while someone passed between them, they would telepathically bombard the passer by with all the riddles in existence, which would paralyze the passer until they solved them all- in other words until they died. Rather than solving the riddles, the only way to pass the gate was to hope the sphinxes didn't open their eyes while you passed. This was simplified in the movie to just shooting energy bolts at the unlucky victim.
• Doubly Subverted in Poison, the titular heroine bluffs her way into a criminal's hideout in order to get information on how to access the world of the Fae. The criminal, Lamprey, asks her a riddle, which Poison objects to; she has enough money to pay for the information and that way they both benefit. She notes that the encounter is playing out like one of the old stories she'd been told as a child. Even Lamprey doesn't seem to have any other reason to ask her a riddle. She ends up giving him the answer anyway, and he gives her the information, leaving her highly suspicious about the tropic nature of the encounter.
• In John Barnes's One for the Morning Glory, the Riddling Beast has a riddle for all who would enter the goblins' lands, and Amatus answers that it is himself and the things that are his, because the answer is always "yourself" in such riddles — and it added "And what has it got in its pockets?" After they escape, they turn the Beast about, which will keep the goblins in, because they can not easily answer a question the answer to which is "yourself."
• In the gamebook Blade of the Guillotine, set during the French Revolution, the protagonist learns that the MacGuffin is in a garden where a plant with underground roots is feeding the hearts and souls of the nation. It means that the MacGuffin is, well, buried in a potato garden. If the player tries to be smart, reads the riddle as a metaphor and visits the National Convention, he gets in trouble.
• In Last Sacrifice, Lissa's final trial as a candidate for the throne is to answer the following riddle: "What must a queen possess in order to truly rule her people?"
• In The Last Hero, the Death Course the Silver Horde have to cross includes a riddle door, although Boy Willie says the answer will be "teeth", because "It's always teeth in poxy old riddles". After they've got past the course despite getting the riddle wrong, he admits "All right, al right, sometimes it's 'tongue'."
• In The Light Jar, Nate and Kitty solve a fifty-year-old treasure hunt with rhyming clues.
• The Mummy Monster Game:
  • In book 1, three of the puzzles in "The Mummy Monster Game" involve solving a riddle to retrieve Osiris's missing part (his first foot, second leg and four internal organs). A riddle also provides the hints needed to defeat Ammit, the final monster of the game, who is faced after the player retrieves the jeweled scarab representing Osiris's heart.
  • In book 2, "The Mummy Tomb Hunt" game gives the players a riddle based on a real-life location; solving it can give the player a combination of the following rewards: narrow the search location, give the player a new clue, or unlock a mini-game that teaches them a skill they'll need later.

Live-Action TV

• One of the tests to find the Holy Grail in Stargate SG-1 was to answer a series of riddles.
  • The whole quest was basically a giant riddle, since they had to figure out the instructions for each individual test plus the general instructions for the quest.
• The game show Jackpot was based around people correctly answering riddles, contained in wallets held by a group of 15 people, to build the titular Jackpot. Each correct riddle would add an amount of money to the Jackpot, and on occasions act as a Bonus Space. If the riddle was answered incorrectly, the contestant who asked the riddle would assume control and the other would take their place in the gallery. If they happened to match the "target number" with the last two digits of the current Jackpot total, then the contestant in control would have a chance to go for an even-bigger "Super Jackpot" (the value of the Super Jackpot and the target number would be established before the game began).
• So Weird had a variation that substituted trivia questions for riddles and instead of answering correctly to pass, the characters had to answer correctly to survive. (An incorrect answer would result in the character being turned into an eggplant.) The monsters of the week were very sneaky and would con people into playing without realizing it. (By asking a seemingly innocent question and then changing the person when they didn't know the answer, even though the person hadn't actually agreed to the game.) Fi ends up having to play the game in order to save her friends and family. Interestingly, vague answers still counted. When Fi doesn't know the specific answer (Who lost the Republican nomination to Eisenhower) but gives a non specific but technically right answer (Fi just says "Another Republican") the monster is forced to admit that's technically correct although it makes sure to ask questions with specific answers from then on.
• In the Merlin episode "The Dark Tower", Merlin becomes exasperated with Queen Mab speaking in riddles so she switches to speaking in rhyme. In this case, her riddles explained how to escape the impenetrable forest and her rhyme was a dark prophecy.
• On Scorpion, early in season 3 when Toby is trying to find out who Happy's mystery husband is, he pays Mark Collins a visit in prison. Collins doesn't say who it is, but gives him a riddle instead: "Water lies still, but water still lies. Add 50 and you'll have your answer." Toby solves it at the end of the episode. The Roman numeral for 50 is L, when added to the middle of "water" gives the name "Walter".
• In Willow (2022), Wiggleheim's Tomb turns out to be guarded by a huge carved face which recites a riddle. Much to everyone's annoyance, when Jade solves it, it asks another riddle. That one takes longer to solve, but Elora manages it, and the tomb finally opens.

Mythology and Religion

• The Riddle of the Sphinx, a trope in its own right, is Older Than Feudalism. The first author to mention it is Apollodorus in the 2nd century CE.
• Riddles are an important part of Norse Mythology, and in particular Odin is a fan of riddle games to the DEATH. This is also the inspiration for the riddle battle in The Hobbit between Gollum and Bilbo, down to the unanswerable question.
• In the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, Samson challenges his wedding guests with a bet on the riddle, "Out of the eater came something to eat / Out of the strong came something sweet." The guests aren't able to guess it, so they resort to cheating by pressuring his wife to extract the answer from him. Samson doesn't take this well at all. (The answer is that Samson killed a lion and discovered that bees had made honey in its carcass.)

Tabletop Games

• Call of Cthulhu supplement Curse of the Chthonians, adventure "The City Without A Name". The investigators must calculate the five numbers of Cthulhu using the occult science of Gematria in order to enter, use and escape from a special chamber.
• Quite a few in Dungeons & Dragons. For example, in the adventure "White Plume Mountain":
  • The party must answer a riddle (asked by an actual sphinx) to get past a Wall of Force.
  • The PCs must figure out which of five numbers (5, 7, 9, 11 and 13) didn't belong with the others 9, which isn't a prime number or be attacked by flesh golems.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • As everyone knows, Sphinxes are fond of riddles. Sphinx cards, therefore, will often pose riddles to the players, such as "What is the top card of your library?" or "Which creature card have I stolen from your deck?" or "What card is in your opponent's hand?"
  • Sphinxes feature heavily in Test of Metal, so Tezzeret has plenty of riddles to solve.
    I am the stone that comes not from the sea
    I am the blood but the blood is not me
    I am the key to the door with no locks
    I am the mainspring that winds broken clocks
    I am your tears on the chains of the rack
    I am your gift and you can't give me back

Video Games

• In Betrayal at Krondor, moredhel "riddle chests" are locked with a combination lock, not a key lock, and the combination is a word, not a sequence of numbers. A clue is also carved on the chest in the form of a riddle; the answer to the riddle is the combination. For extra difficulty, both riddle and combination are written in the moredhel language, so if your party doesn't include someone who can read moredhel, you have no chance of opening the chest. A simple riddle is given as an example in the game manual:
  Prince Arutha, from his lofty perch,
  Will find our troops without a search.
  His men will fall, his castle too,
  And then what will Prince Arutha do?
  Answer: DIE
• Exile II has a dungeon that is supposed to test your mind. In addition to several puzzles are many riddles.
• Professor Layton; regularly lampshaded with Layton ineffectually protesting that he has other things to do other than solve riddles. Ineffectually, as he still has to solve the damn things.
• Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent: Similar to Layton, Nelson Tethers frequently has to Solve the Soup Cans wherever he goes. There's a plot-relevant reason for this.
• Spyro: Year of the Dragon featured a level called Haunted Tombs, in which the dogs down there would make you solve a riddle before passing certain points or doing challenges.
• Might and Magic: Escaton, the Big Bad of VIII actually has a very good reason for giving you riddles to solve: it allows him to give you information on what to do to stop him without technically giving you information on what to do to stop him (such nuances become important when you really don't want to do something, but are forced by your programming to continue doing it and not deliberately help stop it).
• Earthbound Beginnings: Three guards in Magicant will only let Ninten through if he can answer their riddle. Luckily, Ninten has telepathy and can find the answer in their minds ("Two alligators"). This confuses them, as they haven't actually thought of a riddle to match the answer yet.
• One optional mission in Privateer 2: The Darkening involves using math to identify the nav point you need to go to, to complete the mission.
• On two occasions in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Mario and his party meet a Thwomp who asks them a series of questions related to what has previously happened in the game. If the player answers them all correctly, he avoids a rather tough battle. The last question in each case can be the trickiest: "What number question is this?" Harder than you think because you probably won't be keeping track.
• Baldur's Gate 2 throws these at you by the bucket load, sometimes in a quest, sometimes to get started on a quest.
• Appears twice in Dragon Age: Origins: a set of three in the Mage origin story, and a set of 10 as part of the gauntlet protecting the Sacred Ashes. The second set particularly fits the trope, because the answer to each ghost's riddle is also symbolic of the part they played in the history of the Ashes. Piecing together the history beforehand helps you figure out the riddle, and the ghosts' spiel lets you better understand the quest itself and which of its outcomes is the good/bad one.
  • When Alistair asks Sten what he did to pass the time during his two week stay in his cage, Sten replies that he would pose riddles to passing travelers and offer them riches in reward. Alistair asks if he really did this, and Sten, being among the resident Deadpan Snarkers, replies with a flat no.
  • In Dragon Age II, Isabela asks Hawke for advice on how to convince her archenemy's second-in-command to give away his boss's location. Her final suggestion is to challenge him to a riddle game, and make, "Where is your boss?" one of the riddles.
• In Planescape: Torment the witch Ravel presents travelers with the question "What can change the nature of a man?" Allegedly, she grants wishes to those who get the answer right, and if they got it wrong she killed them. Subverted harshly because she's lying. She kills everyone whatever they answer, as she only cared about the Player Character's answer.
  • The answer he originally gave was "regret", but he later says that the answer really depended on who was being asked, and that there were many possible answers that were legit.
    • And then at the end you find out the true answer Belief, for whatever you believe can change your nature is capable of changing you
• Bookworm Adventures has a boss battle with the Sphinx, who asks Lex riddles. Solving them — i.e. spelling the correct answer — empties her life bar immediately, stripping her of one chance to survive. This isn't required, however, as she can be defeated the regular way.
• Planetarium has three puzzles in each of its twelve parts, and one of them is always in the form of a riddle. You're actually not required to solve them to proceed, as the next part of the game-story automatically opens after one week, but the riddles' answers are an integral part of the Major Puzzle.
• An important Plot Coupon in Ultima V is guarded by a Daemon who will ask you a riddle. Get it wrong, you'll have to fight him. Get it right, you'll have to fight him anyway, because "never trust a daemon."
• You must solve a Sphinx's riddle in Fantasy Quest. The modern day port of the game uses a mouse rather than typed commands, simplifying this considerably.
  • Parodied and subverted in the game's sequel, where the sphinx rejects every answer you give and you're eventually given the option to just kill it.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In Arena, the player generally has to get through several riddles to access each piece of the Staff of Chaos. They aren't particularly hard, but they aren't easy, either (not least because, unlike in many games, you have to type in the answer rather than select it from a list).
  • In Morrowind, An Imperial Legion quest tasks you with defending the honor of the Legion by participating in a riddle contest with a Buoyant Armiger of the Tribunal Temple. The correct answers will only appear if your Intelligence is above 50, or if you've picked up a copy of "The Red Book of Riddles".
• In King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, the Gate in the Land of the Dead will eat Alexander unless he can solve the following riddle. (The solution isn't impossible to figure out from the question, but it appears in-game on a page torn out from a book.)
  My first is foremost legally,
  My second circles outwardly,
  My third leads all in victory,
  My fourth twice ends a nominee,
  My whole is this gate's only key.
  • The solution (which has to be typed in, in contrast to the rest of the icon-based interface) is Love; each line in the poem hints at one of the letters in the word successively.
• Knights of the Old Republic: on Korriban, you can pick up a job to deliver a mysterious alien artifact to a Hutt on Tatooine, with the explicit warning that you don't open it. Inside, you find the long-imprisoned mind of an alien later revealed to be a Rakatan who quite naturally wants out, and your body proves the perfect opportunity. Since you're not about to just give it to him, an exchange of riddles is how he suggests you sort the issue out.
  • Similarly in Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Jedi Consular accidentally sends their consciousness into a Sith Holocron, believing it to be a Noetikon (A sort of special Jedi Holocron), where a mysterious entity known as the Master of Questions forces the Consular into playing a game of riddles in exchange for being let go. Bonus points for the Consular being able to answer the riddles due to the knowledge they received from the previous Noetikons.
• Spoofed in Dragon Age: Origins with the crazy old man in the forest who will only answer a question if you answer one of his questions first. But he doesn't have any good question at hand right now, so he just goes for "What... is yer name?"
• The Dead Mines: One of the notes has a mine-themed riddle right next to a collapsed tunnel the player needs to clear. Turns out to be a red herring, though, and the player solves the puzzle without using the riddle's solution.
• In Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader, a side quest can involve solving these; the trial to become favored by the Knights of Saladin has you choose to test either your strength or your wit. If you choose to test your wit, you solve three riddles that usually include things like "Say my name and I am gone" (silence) or "He who makes me needs me not, he who buys me uses me not, he who uses me knows it not" (a coffin).
• Densetsu no Stafy 4 has this as a feature that shows up in the postgame, where you must unlock new routes in stages by answering riddles given by Tobira Majin. In order to answer the riddles, you have to collect answer cards that feature objects, then use the right ones for each riddle.
• In In Kingdom Come: Deliverance there is a wandering Riddler who will ask the player character a random riddle for a small wager. If the player guesses right, he doubles his wager.
• In Conquests of Camelot, Glastonbury Tor is surrounded by a magic barrier. The only way past it is to talk to some stones and answer the riddles they pose.
• MediEvil has Jack of the Green, an animated sculpture in the Asylum Grounds, who poses four riddles to the player before you may leave. Answering each one (by completing various tasks in the grounds) opens new parts of the level. Once you solve the fourth, Jack turns out to be a Sore Loser and refuses to help you, merely opening up the grounds so you can "find your own way out!"

Visual Novels

• In Spirit Hunter: NG, the first sign of the trickster Kakuya's curse is a riddle on a black postcard that she leaves for her victim to find. The one that Akira and Ami solve contains a reference to The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, implying that Kakuya is related to the Princess Kaguya from the tale.

Webcomics

• Occurs in this The Adventures of Dr. McNinja strip, and is beautifully subverted in the next one.
• Played with in Artificial Time XS with Squish, the spellcaster whose spells are in the form of riddles. The problem is that if the target of the spell can correctly answer the riddle, the spell fails.
• Homestuck: In the Intermission, Clover of the Felt (who behaves like a stereotypical leprechaun) offers to help the Midnight Crew open Lord English's safe if they can solve his riddles. Diamonds Droog cuts to the chase and tries to just threaten him into compliance instead.
• Subverted in the November 12, 2003 strip of Nodwick where the party bribes the sphinx to let them pass. As Nodwick points out, the answer was (ironically, or perhaps not so much) "money".
• A subversion in The Order of the Stick. First, there's Haley's famous solution to the "two paths, one honest man, one liar, one question" riddle. The Test of the Mind.
  Vaarsuvius: Gordium called—they have a knot you may want to take a look at.
• PepsiaPhobia: Inconsequentia's sphinx Trivia is trying to come up with a new riddle. The old one (viz. the classic Riddle of the Sphinx) was so obvious that even Phobia saw it coming (she was just letting Trivia finish to be polite, which Gastro has yet to learn).
• In Rusty and Co., the Bottle Fairy is too drunk to remember her riddle.
  • Inverted later. To create an air of exclusivity about her bar, Stabs sets the rule that people must ask the bouncer a riddle he can't answer — and to ensure it does not actually exclude people or their money, she sets the Dumb Muscle Slobber as the doorman. Dorilys passes by asking, "And why do I need to ask you a riddle to pass?"
• Sluggy Freelance: Played with during the Stormbreaker Saga with the Gatekeeper of Yffi.
• Subverted in Subnormality. The sphinx meets Oedipus' mother.^note  After melting Oedipus into dust when he guessed man - the correct answer was WOMAN When she learns who she's talking to, the sphinx has a massive flipout about which one of them is considered the monster, and makes Oedipus' mother take her place.
• In xkcd, the classic "Knights and Knaves" puzzle is sent up/parodied where there's three guards. One only tells the truth, one only lies, and one stabs people who ask tricky questions.
  • Not to mention that in reality the whole setup is just a trap to capture escaping logicians. None of the doors actually lead out.

Web Video

• World War II: The Introduction to Episode 12 - "The Mysterious Threat to the Royal Navy" takes this form, with host Indy Neidell hamming it up into two phones at once in a Shout-Out to Batman (1966):
  Indy: Riddle me this, mister Chamberlain! Riddle me this, Messieur Daladier! What is it that flies through the skies, dives through the sea, lives in the mud, and needles you mercilessly? Well, whatever it is, it isn't yours. It's all mine!
• In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, Leman Russ plays a game of 20 questions with his drukhari slavers with the caveat that anything he thinks of that they fail to guess manifests in reality. The drukhari are reduced to tears once they realize that he's thinking of SLAANESH, who's name they can't say without having their souls consumed. The drukhari try to worm their way around saying the word Russ is thinking of, but he feigns ignorance and forces them to say it.
• 7-Second Riddles: The plot of some riddles involves a character being forced by another to solve a puzzle- either they solve the riddle correctly and survive, or fail and die.

Western Animation

• In Freakazoid!, "I am the doorkeeper with horrible skin. Answer my riddle and then you come in." "Oh, man. I hate these."
• Besides the Riddler (obviously), Batman: The Animated Series also had Batman deal with a Riddler-lite villain named Wormwood in "The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy".
• In Niko and the Sword of Light - The Mogwamp will guide Niko back to the trail, if he can solve its riddle. It breaks its word one minute later and tries to eat Niko.
• Adventure Time:
  • In "Time Sandwich", Magic Man steals Jake's "ultimate sandwich" and traps it in a magical bubble where time moves slower on the inside. He tells Jake that the only way to break through is to solve his riddle: "When your face shows 7:20, when green leaves turn brown, the only way forward is down! Then you'll see, the wetter, the better." It turns out when Jake gets sad enough, he's able to move through the time bubble at normal speed... unfortunately for Magic Man.
  • In "Bonnie and Neddy", a forbidden chamber in the Candy Kingdom is guarded by three Banana Guards, who will only let people pass if they answer a riddle... which they have forgotten.
• The Venture Brothers assigns this behavior to Boggles the Clue Clown, apparently an Expy of The Riddler. Since Boggles is introduced at his own funeral, only one riddle is ever heard, presented to his nemesis Captain Sunshine during the eulogy. Nonetheless, Boggles manages to give the answer himself; it is "jack in the box", and his corpse was spring-loaded into the casket.
• In Peppermint Rose, Rose challenges Buddy Bug to a riddle contest in order to escape his trap.
• The Powerpuff Girls are tasked by the villain Him to solve a series of riddles in order to find their dad Professor Utonium in the episode "Him Diddle Riddle." Among them is to find out where it's boiling and freezing at the same time. The Mayor of Townsville susses it out—the global coordinates of 32 (freezing Fahrenheit) and 212 (boiling Fahrenheit) which leads to the Otto Time Diner. Or maybe an ice cream truck is on fire.
• Trulli Tales: In each episode Trulli Grandma gives the children a riddle.

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