Elissar/To Save A Kingdom Reddit thread harshly critical of riddle from Memories of Holdenshire

[jeffh]

I just stumbled on a thread on Reddit that was very critical of Granny Appleseed's riddle on page 33 of Memories of Holdenshire. Although one thing the thread doesn't mention is that the adventure does allow for fairly easy skill checks to get additional clues, which somewhat reduces the bite of the criticisms there, I nevertheless find myself agreeing with their general thrust. The riddle has some logical issues such that even after seeing the answer it doesn't really make much sense. The answers are a real stretch at best and arguably even contradict the clues they're supposed to be derived from (examples: a mint isn't a coin, it's a place coins come from; robins don't nest on the ground, so the "lea" line is misleading at best).

Thoughts on this? More constructively, if you too find yourself agreeing the riddle has problems, suggestions for a better replacement, ideally with the same answers?

 

[xiphumor]

Easiest fix I can think of to replace “the lea” with “a tree,” which is more common for robin’s eggs. Changing “the sea” to “a sea” could help make the riddle refer not to the egg’s blue shell, but simply the white of the egg, which would resemble water when uncooked.

For mint, perhaps “What sharpens a brew, and makes silver new.” Clearer than the original, but hopefully you can send a few players down the wrong path of thinking about how to remove tarnish from silver. I also think of mint as sharper than sweet.

TBH, I think the morel = morale pun is kind of clever once it was explained to me, but if we want to broaden it to just mushrooms, we could go with “What circles in hoods to devour the woods,” which also sounds like it’s a kind of cult.

 

[Morrus]

I think the easiest thing to do with riddles which aren't working for you or your group is to simply replace them with another.

Maybe -- (just grabbing from a quick web search) -- for items:

• Something more useful when it is broken (an egg).
• Something easy to lift but hard to throw (a feather).
• A type of room with no walls, doors, or windows (a mushroom).

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I think the easiest thing to do with riddles which aren't working for you or your group is to simply replace them with another.

Maybe -- (just grabbing from a quick web search) -- for items:

• Something more useful when it is broken (an egg).
• Something easy to lift but hard to throw (a feather).
• A type of room with no walls, doors, or windows (a mushroom).

minor necro, sorry

But... I found a hardcopy of this at a local used booksellers. It's got literally 1500 riddles in it. It's probably worth the US$11 you would pay for it (if you live in USA)

https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/a-dictionary-of-riddles-0415026768