Six Intelligent Ways Of Enhancing Your Riddle-Solving Ability
Practicing riddles regularly can simplify your thinking, strengthen your memory retention ability and enhance cognitive capabilities.
After reading over a thousand riddles, you begin to identify similar patterns that can be mastered, to dramatically enhance your ability to solve brain teasers and new mind-bending riddles. After recognizing the tactic used in the riddle, the answer becomes far more simpler and apparent to solve. Here are some tips, if mastered, can help you solve frustratingly difficult riddles almost instantly.
Identify the two fundamental types of riddles.
Riddles have two fundamental types: conundrums and enigmas. Both types are typically composed as a dialogue. Enigmas are presented using allegorical, associational, or metaphorical language that demands experience and creativity to answer. On the other hand, conundrums are presented as questions that employ puns or the answer and sometimes both.
Think metaphor
Enigma is the most frustrating and common type of riddle. These riddles employ metaphors to describe things that usually seem impossible to identify. Even if you recognize the riddle as an enigma, it can still be difficult to grasp the metaphor.
Solve brain games and puzzles every day
When you repeat a specific type of activity or task every day, your brain requires less effort to expand in order to perform it. Regularly solving puzzles or brain games will help sharpen your brain and analytical skills, enabling you to identify wordplay and patterns.
Question your assumptions
Often riddles try to misdirect people, leaving them feeling mocked and tricked when they realize how obviously incorrect their assumption was. Hence, challenge every possible answer you are assuming to be true. Ask yourself if the riddle categorically suggests everything you are concluding or if it is just an assumption.
Do not fall for the misdirection.
When the answer to a riddle seems astonishingly obvious, you are most likely dealing with a misdirection riddle. For example: If a yellow man resides in a yellow house, a green man resides in a greenhouse, a purple man resides in a purple house, and a black man resides in a black house; Then who resides in the white house? This riddle might trick you to assume 'White Man' but you know we are talking about the President of the United States
Pay attention to the wordplay.
Riddles often use enigmas, metaphors, and wordplay to transform an obvious question into something very difficult. Hence, reframe the question and try to identify the usage of wordplay to get to the answer.
It is okay if you cannot solve a riddle immediately, stay with it for some time and allow the creative juices of your brain to flow.
