Ask Me

I received a clever AMA question today, and I thought I would share it here, too.

You find yourself in a battle of riddles against a Sphinx, Gollum, or some other dangerously clever being 🧩 What riddle are you asking to outwit them? Something ancient, clever, funny, impossible, or secretly designed to trap them?

I was thinking about this and all the clever people you might have to face.

I am a fan of funny, but I think Gollum is not going to understand my sense of humor, and the only joke I have involves a bar, a horse, and a long face.

I think it is also inconceivable that I could beat a Sicilian, especially if death were on the line. Can’t fight against vengeance or twu love either, for that matter.

I could fight Nazis and stormtroopers all day. Troopers are never going to hit you, and you just have to wait for the Nazis to commit hubris.

I am a librarian (said in Evelyn’s voice, even though she was an Egyptologist or archaeologist in the Mummy), I know very little about a lot of things, so maybe I would be clever enough to go against the Sphinx. I might have the confidence, at least, and fake it. Find my humanity. Look past the literal and logical, and it would help if I were a mother fucker.

I could catch them with something paradoxical like – If I tell you that I am lying to you right now, am I telling the truth?

This would catch me up, too, Sphynx.