Riddles

I was adding a new riddle and it reminded me of a lovely subbing story. This starts about a year ago. I was subbing at Jackson Middle School and the teacher left enough work to keep the student busy for an hour in an hour and twenty minute period. During these extra minutes, I give them riddles and every now and then they give me riddles. They get really excited when they riddle me. So I gave the classes a number of riddles. I tend to start with an engaging one like the Take Me to the River and then go to an easy one like Comparing Apples and Oranges or To Each His Own then I follow up with a hard one that they can still understand. This is my favorite riddle, Pudding Survey. They can guess answers, but I will only reply with, "What makes that answer better than some other answer?"

I feel at this point I must explain why this is my favorite riddle. I heard it in college from a troubled student in an child psychology class. I was able to figure it out pretty quickly. I get that from my mom who tends to figure out the twist in the ending of a movie by the first 20 minutes. Thanks mom! Anyway, the problem requires a trail of deductive logic and careful listening. Most tend to think that not enough info is given, but all the necessary information is there. It's also intriguing to see what other people find as important information and what they think it must lead to.

Back to the story. After I get a few reasons such as "Because I said so", or "Because old people like pudding" I then get more question about the problem. Usually I have to repeat it 4 or 5 times. When all hope is lost they tend to ask questions that are way outside the box to see if there is some dumb trick. "What type of pudding is it?" "What state do they live in?" "Are any of them dead?"

I must also mention here that people tend to like to kill off or bludgeon the characters in the riddle. If they can get it to work, then killing someone must help.

It's around this time that half of them lose interest and the other half start pulling their hair out. Class also tends to end around now. I refuse to give them the answer to the pudding problem, though I usually give them the answers to any others if someone else hadn't already solved it.

Well, that was a year ago. I then got a job at Cleveland HS where I actually had a student solve the problem. I was very impressed. Time continues to pass and it becomes a new school year. I'm again asked to sub for that same teacher at that same school. Different kids, but same old fun! At this point a revel in the cyclical nature of life, but our tale does not end there folks.

I am soon asked to sub at Wilson HS. I taught there 2 years ago for those of you who don't remember. During second period, as the student quietly work, two students come up to me and ask a question. "Hey, she was afraid to ask, but what was the answer to the pudding riddle?" AAAHAHAHAHAHA! YES, they are students from Jackson Middle School who's minds I had infected. Talk about cyclical. I laugh out loud, breaking the odd silence of the class room. I ask if they remember the riddle and they tell me that they don't remember a lot of it, but they tell me they worked on it for weeks and got nowhere. At this point in time, the rest of the class is intrigued and wants to know what this pudding riddle is. I warn them that it is addictive and may drive them mad, but they through caution to the wind as their curiosity is too strong. I get many answers, but as usual no one is able to find a reason to make their answer better than someone else's. I do get some valiant efforts and good ideas. Some of them have half of it, but none can get past the missing piece of the house number.

That is my story, I hope I told it well. Feel free to try the riddle yourself. You can leave an anonymous comment that I will reply to. Or if that seems to complicated you can e-mail me: unbread at gmail dot com.