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A sphinx's riddle with the solution "Death" Question
I am creating a challenge for roleplayers, and I want them to meet a guardian like a Sphinx, who requires them to solve a riddle in order to proceed.
For reasons I won't go into, the riddle's solution needs to be "Death".
Challenge: Come up with the best riddle you can whose solution is "Death".
Guidelines:
- Riddles of any difficulty are welcome, but try to indicate how difficult you expect it to be.
- Especially if it is obscure or complicated, please include an explanation of the solution.
- While not required, it is nice if the riddles rhyme, or at least flow in a poetic way.
If you need an example of the type of riddle I am looking for, here is one from The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien:
This thing all things devours
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers
Gnaws iron, bites steel, Grinds hard stones to meal
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
The solution to this one is not Death, but
hidden spoiler
Time
2 answers
I tried to make this one just a little tricky to give your players something to think through. Thirty White Horses, the hardest of Gollum's riddles,[1] was short with a persistent metaphor. I'm aiming for slightly-less-hard than that one.
Enjoy this poem about a fishing trip:
A mayfly dawn
A river trip
A pouring out
For thirsty lipA shallow beam
A flashy toss
Grandfather rows
The catch across
Explanation
A mayfly dawn
Mayflies live as adults for a single night. They mate at sunset, and by dawn some species are already dead. They also make great fishing bait.
A river trip
This is an allusion to the boat-trip-to-cross-over myths like Charon and the Styx. You'll see this come up a lot in this riddle.
A pouring out
For thirsty lip
"Pour one out for the dead." This is not thirsty fishermen drinking a beer.
A shallow beam
Still the riverboat allusion. But this time, "shallow" may help your party think of graves.
A flashy toss
The fishing interpretation of this line is a fancy cast. But the death interpretation is dropping a coin for the ferryman into the grave.
Grandfather rows
Grandfather is a generic term for your elders. This could be your long-deceased ancestors coming to bring you over to them on the far side. It could be a name for Time personified. Or just for Death.
This is also a place where you can adjust to make the riddle easier.
- A figure rows very neutral
- A strain of oar also neutral
- He turns and guides an additional touch of transition
- Grim Charon poles giving it away
The catch across
It's not fish that he's bringing!
-
For me, anyway. It's the only one I couldn't solve. ↩︎
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Here's my suggestion:
No life within, no life without.
Forever you will have no time.
The lack of motion that is moving.
No pocket for the boatman's dime.
I guess if you know the solution, you don't need an explanation, but anyway:
Explanation
- No life within: Death is the absence of life.
- No life without: There is no life without death.
- Forever you will have no time: Death lasts forever, but death is the end of your (personal) time, so you won't have time when you're dead.
- The lack of motion: Obviously if you're dead, you won't move.
- that is moving: When someone dies, the people close to him are (emotionally) moved.
- No pocket for the boatman's dime: This combines the saying that the last shirt has no pockets (that is, you can't take money with you when you die) with the myth that you have to pay for the passage of the Styx (where do you get that money from, if you can't take it with you?).
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