* RIDDLE *

 During winter evenings, at parties without dancing, the riddles greatly assisted in games and entertainment. Adolescents and children amused themselves with this matter at any time, also forcing adults who knew more riddles. And the meaning of the riddles was very much in presenting them rather than coming with the correct answer. Solving it was not necessary.
 Propose a puzzle known to all is annoying, but give an unknown or just invented that is very difficult to solve. So, the riddler, whetted the curiosity to the limit, usually himself gave out the answer. And really, try to guess who is speaks with whom in this example, the riddle: "Crooked and sly, where it did run? Clean-cut and shaven, but it is not your business" Even the most intelligent person would not immediately imagine the stream, curling among mown meadows or a harvested field.
 The question: "What is higher than the forest, thinner than hair?" is easier to answer because we talked about nature. Wind and water are inseparable even in fairy tales. So, by association, it is not difficult to guess, "What kind of road is half a year is a walk, half a year is a ride."

 Remembering the river, be sure to remember the ice hole: "In the afternoon, the round window glass is smashed. But, during the night, it is again intact." And if after all this to ask: "Which plant grows with the root up?" - Perhaps there is a wit, who would guess that this is an icicle.

 "And which grass even a blind man knows?" - a grandmother asks her grandson, knowing that after a while, she will hear a scream of delight: "Stinging Nettle!" A riddle about the rooster - "Twice-born, never baptized, and the first singer in the world" - could make work up fantasy even for adults. Such a riddle as: "Through a cow and birch the pig linen drags" - could be born only in the professional, in our case, cobbler's environment. A riddle: "Two little brothers belted with one belt"- makes sense only in the Russian North, where the basis of the fence is two stakes woven with the willow's switch.

 Some riddles sound like proverbs, and, conversely, many proverbs may well be used as riddles.

 Widely are known ambiguous riddles, sounding almost obscene. An unseemly form of such puzzles was compensated by the complete moral sense. A humorous riddle ("A cat is sitting on a window sill, and its tail looks like a cat's tail, but it is not the cat.") were replaced by whole guessing charades and problems with the numbers:

 "Thrushes flew and landed on the field to peck. If they sit by two on two birches, one birch remains empty, and if they sit by one by one, then one thrush has nowhere to go. How many birds flew, and how many birches stood?"

 Heroes and characters from folk tales also often tried to solve each other riddles.