Bonus episode - Riddle Guy

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Transcript below:

Two bees, or is that two wasps? That is the question. Welcome to Night Vale

You all know I love riddles. I’m a Riddle Guy. It’s one of my things. As I’ve mentioned constantly over the last several years. Oh, the number of broadcasts I’ve spent just talking about riddles. You’re probably all tired of it. Cecil is doing an entire show about riddles again? Ugh, wake me up when he’s doing one of his rare broadcasts that documents something weird happening in town.

But listen, a riddle is a great way to keep the mind active. It’s a playful way to engage with the world. And it’s also just darn fun. That’s the word for it. Darn fun.

So here are some riddles for you, and I’ll give the answers in a bit while you mull them over.

A father and a boy get into a car accident. They are rushed to the hospital. The surgeon enters the room, sees the boy, and says “I can’t operate on this boy. He is me.” How is this possible?

Next one.

Mary’s parents have four children. Their names are April, May, June, and July. If those are all the children that they have, then who is Mary?

I think today will just be riddles. I’m the riddle guy. That’s my nickname around town. Hey riddle guy, people yell at me. Sometimes in cruel tones. Sometimes in cruel tones that hurt my feelings. Sometimes making me cry. Sometimes I cry at home, and say into the mirror “yeah, yeah I am a riddle guy and that’s ok.” And the mirror says that it’s ok too. The mirror almost always agrees with me.

So here are some classic riddles.

You have a cabbage, a rabbit, and a fox. You have to get across a river. However, you are very hungry, and want to eat all three. You don’t think that they are safe with you. You are starting to wonder if even you are safe with you, if you are just an inherently dangerous person. Which animal do you let free first, to have a head start before you begin hunting them?

Here’s another great riddle.

Donny lives in a green house. Sally is five inches shorter than Tara. Bill works in the big city as a wall street guy. He’s running a ponzi scheme, but none of his neighbors know that. Shirley lives in a blue house. Which house does Jerry live in?

Ok, call in with your answers. I’ll give them all at the end, so don’t worry if you’re stumped.

Let’s get to our final set of riddles. Riddle me this, as that famous Batman villain, The Joker, always says.

Here’s one of my personal favorites.

I speak without a mouth, hear without ears, I live in a cave and eat slime every day, I see without eyes, I feel without hands, I live in a cave and love to eat slime. What am I?

Did you guess it?

And finally, here is one of the oldest but trickiest riddles that humankind has ever riddled.

A traveler comes to two doors guarded by two guards. One door leads to earthly riches. The other door leads to a hungry tiger. Both guards always tell the truth, but they have fundamentally different conceptions of the world, such that their understanding of reality does not overlap. The traveler is able to ask one question. What question should the traveler ask?

Answers at the end of the broadcast, but until then, much to ponder, much to ponder.

Well, the time has come to find out the answers to all of the riddles! I hope that I stumped you with at least some of them. Maybe the one about eating slime in the cave? But before we deriddle your brain, let’s take a quick look at the-

Actually you know what. I don’t care about the weather today. I’m too excited about riddles!

Let’s get to what’s important: the answers to these riddles! I’m sure most of you have gotten them already, but just in case, let’s go through them.

So, first riddle. Father and son. Car accident. Surgeon, upon seeing the boy, says, I can’t operate on him. He is me. How is that possible?

The answer is quite simple: the surgeon is suffering from a delusion that causes him to see everyone around him as a reflection of his own psyche. He will be sent home to recuperate, with the aid of therapy and medication, and will return to work the following year, refreshed. Another doctor was called upon to operate on the boy. The operation was successful, and the boy survived, later became a doctor, and then a time traveler, and traveled back in time to carry out his own operation once the other doctor had to be taken home. So in the end, the doctor who did the operation really was the boy.

Did you guess that? I’m sure you did. It’s a classic. Next riddle.

Mary’s parents have four children. Their names are April, May, June, and July. If those are all the children that they have, then who is Mary?

This one was a bit of a gimmie, but I wanted to throw an easy one in there. Obviously Mary is a kind of alien species that acts like a cuckoo, laying its eggs in other birds’ nests and tricking the mother bird into caring for them. Mary has insinuated herself into a human family where she will remain for 2-5 years before molting into her final form and devouring her host family.

Next riddle!

The cabbage, the rabbit, and the fox. Which do you set free first? Easy. You set yourself free by realizing that you are all made of star stuff, and the idea that there is any difference between you and those three animals and plants is just a story you have been telling yourself. And then you eat them, whole and raw, so that their atoms can reunite with your atoms at last.

Moving on.

Donny lives in the green house. Sally is five inches shorter than Tara. Etc. etc. Which house does Jerry live in?

He lives with Donny, but Donny doesn’t know it. Donny has a spacious attic that Jerry has turned into a kind of nest. Jerry would never hurt Donny. He cares about him. He just wants to live in his walls, that’s all.

Now we get to our final two. First, this classic:

I speak without a mouth, hear without ears, I live in a cave and eat slime every day, I see without eyes, I feel without hands, I live in a cave and love to eat slime. What am I?

The answer, of course, is love. Shame on you if you didn’t get that one.

And our final riddle:

A traveler comes to two doors guarded by two guards. Etc. The traveler is able to ask one question. What question should the traveler ask?

The answer: He should ask one guard “hey, if I asked the other guard, would he say that he had a crush on you? Because he did, btw. Just letting you know.” And then while they are kindling a romance, you just sneak on by. Through one of the doors, and hopefully not the one that has the tiger behind it.

Well, I hope you enjoyed riddling as much as I enjoyed riddling you.

I promise my next broadcast will have fewer riddles. Not no riddles, as you know, I’m just constantly saying them on air. Can’t help myself. But definitely a few less than today.

Stay tuned next for the sound of a knife very slowly being pushed into a cantaloupe

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.