Secrets of the Riddle: Thirteenth Week

Our word this week is “enigma.” Johnson offers this meaning: “A riddle; an obscure question; a position expresses in remote and ambiguous terms.” The Greek from which the word comes is ἄινιγμα (ainigma). Greek lexicons offer these possible usages: “dark saying,” “riddle,” “an obscure thing,” and “indistinct image.” The New Testament describes the word as an obscure reflection in a mirror (1 Corinthians 13:12). This describes the idea exactly. One can see an image, but it is indistinct. This is just what a riddle is – the answer is in the question, but we cannot quite see it. Therein lies the fascination of riddles. A short riddle my father used to tell me when I was young goes like this:

            What’s round like a donut,

            Deep like a cup,

            And all the king’s men and all the king’s horses could never pull it up?

Since each line of the riddle uses common imagery, we feel the answer must be near at hand in our minds. But it remains just out of reach. Successful riddles evoke hope in us that we can surely find the answer. Perhaps we might say to ourselves, “Well, I know about men and horses, and I surely know about donuts and cups; so, I must know the answer.” But the answer is not so obvious. The answer to the little riddle above is: a well. A water well is round and deep and cannot be pulled up by might. Even the answer is simple. It is the means of getting to the answer that is difficult and intriguing.

This brings to mind something that remains an enigma to some – the power of the obvious. It is said that the best place to hide something is in plain sight. Why is this so? It is so because the brains of human beings do many things automatically. We have autofill as it were. An example is why common typos like the the or there for their are so easily overlooked and so hard to find in our own writing. Our brains automatically correct the error as we read. Interestingly, this accounts for almost all variations in the many Greek texts of the New Testament. From an age of hand-writing and hand-copying it is easy to see how such small differences exist in the manuscripts. Not to mention that the earliest manuscripts, the uncials, were written all in capitals with little or no spaces between words or punctuation. By the way, here is the sentence you just read in uncial form, albeit in English.

Nottomentionthattheearliestmanuscriptstheuncialswerewrittenallincapitalswithlittleornospacesbetweenwordsorpunctuation

The obvious and automatic are the keys to good enigmas or riddles – the ones that seem easy to solve but are not. As long as the enigmatist (also from Johnson, one who makes riddles) can make the lines seem obvious while maintaining their obscurity, he is well on his way to success.