Riddle-tale

Traditional stories featuring riddle-contests

Riddle-tales are traditional stories featuring riddle-contests. They frequently provide the context for the preservation of ancient riddles for posterity, and as such have both been studied as a narrative form in their own right, and for the riddles they contain. Such contests are a subset of wisdom contests more generally. They tend to fall into two groups: testing the wisdom of a king or other aristocrat; and testing the suitability of a suitor. Correspondingly, the Aarne–Thompson classification systems catalogue two main folktale-types including riddle-contests: AT 927, Outriddling the Judge, and AT 851, The Princess Who Can Not Solve the Riddle. Such stories invariably include answers to the riddles posed: 'the audience cannot be left dangling'.

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