Riddles are found in many languages of the world. The most characteristic riddles in Chinese are zimi, riddles about characters. Character riddles came into existence as early as two thousand years ago. People made up riddles on the basis of the form, pronunciation and meaning of characters and making use of the different ways the characters are created, such as xiɑngxing “formal resemblance”and huiyi“sense combination”.
A character riddle usually has three components: the riddle itself, the key, and the clue. The Chinese verb that collocates with riddles is da and the clue is given in the form “da something”.
There are many ways of creating a riddle, including addition, deduction, addition plus deduction, stroke description, meaning association, etc. Take the riddle yi tou niu (一头牛) “one ox'”for example. Its key is sheng (生) “live”, which is arrived at by adding the stroke yi (一) “one” to the character niu (牛) “ox”. Another example is chi zhong mei you shui (池中没有水)“There is no water in the pond.”, which is created through a reduction of components. The key to this riddle is ye (也) “too”. By deleting the left three-stroke component for water from the character chi (池) “pond”, one gets the remaining component ye. The riddle yi zi you liu bi, bi bi shi xie de (一字有六笔，笔笔是斜的) “There are six strokes in one character, every one of which is skewed/slanted.”employs the method of stroke description. Formally, each stroke of the character zhong (众) “the masses” is skewed/slanted. The fourth example, which is created through meaning association, is yi biɑn ruɑn, yi biɑn ying. ruɑn de ke zuo xie, ying de ke gɑi fɑng (一边软，一边硬；软的可做鞋，硬的可盖房) “One side is soft, the other side hard. The soft one can be used to make shoes while the hard one can be used to build a house”. The characters ruɑn (软) “soft” and ying (硬) “hard” help to narrow down the possibilities of the answers. The phrase ruɑn de ke zuo xie (软的可做鞋) “The soft one can be used to make shoes.” hints that the character pi (皮) “leather” must be related to the key; and the phrase ying de ke gɑi fɑng (硬的可盖房) “The hard one can be used to build a house.” hints that the character shi (石) stone is implied. Combining shi (石) and pi (皮), we get the key po (破) “broken”.
① 一家十一口（打一个汉字）
② 吃一半，拿一半（打一个汉字）
③ 一人一张口，口下长只手（打一个汉字）
④ 一口吃掉牛尾巴（打一个汉字）
⑤ 一条狗四个口（打一个汉字）
①“There are eleven mouths in a family.” (Guess a Chinese character)
②“Eat one half and take away the other half.” (Guess a Chinese character)
③“One person has one mouth, under which there is a hand.” (Guess a Chinese character)
④ “Eat up an ox’s tail in one gulp.” (Guess a Chinese character)
⑤“A dog has four mouths.” (Guess a Chinese character)
