Utilizing formulas in which the sound and meaning of the words
are uncertain. Back a couple of arts ago we did Conundrums,
which we defined as short riddles with a pun-based answer. So
what’s a riddle? A riddle is a cryptic set of clues, sometimes
in rhyme, sometimes not, that describe the answer in a multitude
of ways. There’s a lot of metaphor and simile in a riddle, and a
lot of thinking outside the box. I’m not terribly good at
riddles. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them, I do, just when
someone else is solving them I was reading Emma not too long ago
and they spend an awful lot of pages on Harriet’s project of
constructing a book of riddles. Apparently taking on such
projects was a bit of a thing in the Regency era, something nice
young ladies did to keep themselves occupied and to expand their
mind. Of course there was ample opportunity for schemes (Austen
liked that word for any sort of plan, good or ill-intended,
which leads me to believe it’s only in modern times that
scheming has become purely neg