The Daily Trope

Colon (ko’-lon): Roughly equivalent to “clause” in English, except that the emphasis is on seeing this part of a sentence as needing completion, either with a second colon (or membrum) or with two others (forming a tricolon). When cola (or membra) are of equal length, they form isocolon.

“I am black, and white, and read all over.” This riddle fails in print. The homophone for read is red. In its saying, given the black and white colors, “read” comes off as the color “red” and the riddle is in the “read.” The riddler asks, “What am I.” Answer: A newspaper. Big ha ha. What a waste of time.

Every morning, before she made me breakfast, my mother would “riddle me” like something out of Batman. It was like my mother was the Riddler. if I was unable to solve the riddle, she would yell into her frying pan like it was a microphone: “You can’t handle the truth!” It was really vexing. I was 11 years old. What the hell did she expect? When I successfully solved a riddle she sang “Amazing Grace” and gave me two jelly donuts. My successful solution was rare, so rare, that the jelly donuts were always stale—hardened with time. So, I just sucked out the raspberry jelly and considered myself lucky. At least I was better off than my Korean refugee friend Do-yun.

His family had fled war-torn Korea. It turned out that his father was a North Korean agent. He was a conduit, a double agent feeding/receiving intelligence to/from the Chinese government operatives who frequented his bar/restaurant “Hot Pot Haven.” He was known as Agent Hot Pot and would receive compromising information on South Korean generals and pass it along to the South Korean government. Although the information was completely false, the generals would be courtmartialed and executed. The South Koreans trusted Agent Hot Pot too much, but the executions opened slots for their promotion, so the South Korean intelligence agents let Hot Pot’s bogus misinformation slide.

Sometimes they would use riddles to convey information: a bold, wily, witty strategy. The riddle below was used to convey the secret North Korean desire to improve its power grid:

“Q: Why did the gardener plant a light bulb in his field?”

This question was transmitted to South Korean operatives who were expected to answer it using the decryption skills they had learned from American Special Services Forces soldiers who had trained them in clandestine literary interpretation and criticism tactics and techniques, and had “armed” each one with a thesaurus and copies of “The Spy’s Dictionary of Riddles.”

Now, we’re in a position to successfully interpret the encrypted message, delivered in the disguise of a riddle:

“A: He was trying to grow a power plant.”

Brilliant! Power plant! Who but a trained riddle-cracker could find the intel in an answer to a so seemingly benign question? This tactic does not depend on cumbersome and expensive cryptology machines. It is seemingly a display of wit, a sort of parlor game designed solely for entertainment as a mask for the concealed communication of crucial international intelligence information. Which it is!

It is well-known that the United States maintains an Army Riddle Brigade, Airborne (ARB). Their mission is “The production and interpretation of politically consequential riddles.” That’s all we know about ARB.

After my friend Do-yun’s father was caught spying for and executed, we took over “Hot Pot Haven.” I learned what hot pot is and tended bar after school. Do-yun held a riddle contest every Wednesday night. One night, three guys in black suits showed up. They led Do-yun out the door with his hands up.

I didn’t know anything about Korean cuisine, so I hired a Korean guy, to replace Do-yun, who made Korean dishes. He cooks and runs the kitchen. His name is Min-ho. In the job interview I asked him a restaurant riddle:

“Q: What is brought to the table, always cut but never eaten?”

My prospective employee couldn’t get the answer. Although he might’ve been faking, this still gave me confidence that he wasn’t a national security threat. So, I hired him.

The answer to the riddle was:

“A: A deck of cards.” 

We resumed Wednesday riddle nights. It usually attracted 10-12 men in black suits. Their enthusiasm was disconcerting. Min-ho seemed to know them.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu.

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