Professor Tabitha Brooding-Hawthorne
August 30, 2019 6:06 AM
Advanced DADA - Riddle me this! by Professor Tabitha Brooding-Hawthorne
The more time Tabitha spent being a teacher, the more she found herself growing to love the job. There was something about passing on her knowledge of the world on to the younger generations that made her feel somewhat immortal. Of course, she knew that she would not live forever but she liked to imagine future generations passing on knowledge to their children that she had given them and hopefully, her name would be used. Was it narcissistic or egotistical to hope for such a thing? Perhaps but it still gave Tabitha pride in her work and a drive to teach her classes to the very best of her ability.There was a few minutes before the arrival of her Advanced Class and she was busy finishing her chalk sketches on the blackboard. Her hands were dusty with chalk and, in hindsight, Tabitha could’ve used magic to create the sketches but she preferred to use her own hands. Her other hand held one of her journals for reference, which she glanced down at occasionally to check certain details. She managed to finish just as she heard the door to her classroom swing open, announcing the arrival of her class.
As her students entered and took their seats, she dusted off her hands and put her journal back into its place in her desk drawer with the others. Then, she waited as everybody got out the things they would need for the lesson.
“Good morning, class!” she greeted them, a slight smile on her face as her eyes looked across the room. “Today we’re going to be looking at Sphinxes! Interesting creatures though admittedly with a rather nasty habit of eating people who cannot answer their riddles.”
She let that particular declaration hang in the air for a moment before carrying on. “Now, when I talk of Sphinxes, I am not referring to the muggle perceptions of a Sphinx. In Ancient Egypt, for example, they are seen as guardians of a Pharaoh’s tomb and presented as a lion’s body with a man’s head - the head of the Pharaoh whose tomb they are guarding. Why are they guarding tombs of a dead person? Well, Pharaohs were buried with all of their worldly possessions as Egyptians believed burying people with their wealth would lead them to have a comfortable and luxurious life in the afterlife. Therefore, the Sphinx was supposed to serve as a deterrent to anybody who sought the Pharaoh’s wealth. Perhaps not very effective as Egyptian Sphinxes are simply carved from stone and are not living.”
Tabitha moved closer to the board and indicated to the sketch she had done of the Wizarding Sphinx.
“This is a real Sphinx. In our world, Sphinxes are flesh and blood creatures and are very, very aggressive and also, extraordinarily intelligent and capable of human speech. Their heads are human and are typically female, paired with the body of a lion. Of course, having a lion’s body means that they have the sharp claws of a lion too and it is their paws where they possess their extreme strength. Despite their ability to communicate with humans with human speech, they are classed as Beasts rather than Beings, given their incredibly violent nature.”
“Now, what do you do if you come face-to-face with a Sphinx and you cannot answer their riddle? Well, unfortunately, I believe that no witch or wizard who has given an incorrect answer to the Sphinx’s riddle has walked away alive. They are fast, will not stand still for long and are able to dodge spells without getting exhausted. They are cruel, fearsome creatures who are very good at their job. We don’t know if they have a magical resistance or if any spells can actually be used to escape an attacking Sphinx.”
“The only advice I can truly offer you is this: know your own mind, know your own intelligence. After giving you a riddle, a Sphinx will usually offer you the opportunity to walk away unharmed. If you are not confident and sure that you will get the riddle right, then walk away, or don't ask for it in the first place.”
“So! Your task for today…” Tabitha turned the chalkboard over to reveal three riddles that she had written on the other side. “Read, analyse and find the answer to these riddles. Then, for your homework, come up with your own riddles. You may work in pairs as two heads can be better than one.”
Riddle One:
I am always with you, and nowhere as well.
You don't know I'm here, but others can tell.
I have no agenda, no plan, no goal.
I'm not the cause of wars, but of them my history is full.
I don't judge anyone, though they do judge me.
If you dream you won't find me, but you will if you seek.
What am I?
Riddle Two:
My first is a creature whose breeding is unclear.
My second, a price you must pay.
My whole can be found in the river of Time and refers to events of today.
What am I?
Riddle Three:
When you stop and look, you can always see me.
If you try to touch, you cannot feel me.
I cannot move, but as you near me, I will move away from you.
What am I?
OOC - usual posting rules apply! Tabitha (and her author) have the answers to the riddles. Feel free to tag her in responses.
Subthreads: Is there treasure? by Kir McLeod, Teppenpaw
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Professor Tabitha Brooding-Hawthorne
Advanced DADA - Riddle me this!
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Professor Tabitha Brooding-Hawthorne
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Kir McLeod, Teppenpaw
September 06, 2019 9:03 AM
Is there treasure? by Kir McLeod, Teppenpaw
(OOC - spoiler alert, contains the answer to riddle number 2)Sphinxes were weird. Good weird, mostly. They seemed to super prize their ability to set a tough riddle, but you were allowed to walk away if you couldn’t solve it, and Kir had to wonder… Were you allowed to come back for Round 2, or was it assumed that you were walking away for good, chance gone? If you were allowed back, did the riddle change? Because he could see how, if not, that system could be open to abuse. Or at least, team play. Were you allowed to play as a team - how many people could sit in front of a sphinx and chat out its riddles? If you weren’t allowed, did sphinxes have traits in common with Kneazles - like, could they tell that you’d asked your friends/Google? Was there a time limit? If the rules were fine with lots of people and lots of time were both allowed, did the sphinxes, in part, rely on humans’ inability to get along or to share their rewards as part of a way of keeping their treasure safe? If so, what did that say about people, and the fact that they still felt they had the right to class sphinxes as beasts? It was lots of neat stuff to think about.
For the actual lesson, they weren’t discussing any of that, or the ethics around classing things as beings/beasts, they were answering riddles. Kir was down for that. He enjoyed puzzles of all kinds, and eagerly started reading the board when the riddles came up.
Right. Well. Okay.
He supposed he shouldn’t have assumed that it would be easy. There was metaphorical treasure at stake here. He wondered whether they would get chocolate coins if they solved them. Professor Hawthorne had given them chocolate before, for much more incongruous reasons, and when they’d already been advanced students, so clearly she didn’t think it was beneath them as a reward, and she was definitely right about that. Kir was already feeling slightly frustrated - yes, he knew it was meant to be hard, but he had read a lot of riddle books, and he’d sort of expected the answers to jump out a bit more than they were currently doing. Or at least give him a more solid starting point - My first is in… and so on. The first riddle just seemed to involve allowing your brain to become spaghetti, and jumping crisscross down all the crazy paths it offered until you realised how they joined up. Hopefully. Anyway, he wanted chocolate if he did it. And for all his enemies to fail miserably and get metaphorically eaten.
It was weird, to feel like he was just staring at the board as a lesson, so he took a piece of parchment, waving his wand to copy the words down, and then taking his quill and some nice purple ink to annotate.
Okay, first riddle…. Intangible elements of being. Religion. Souls. Those were the first two things that struck him, especially the former given that war was mentioned - but the idea that it was obvious to onlookers… It fitted slightly more with souls - if someone had been kissed by Dementors, he imagined they looked pretty different. But then, weren’t you also aware of your own soul, and definitely of your own religion? He was pretty sure it was some abstract noun like that, but he wasn’t getting any more ideas. In fact, now that he had thought those two words, his brain was stuck on a loop with those being the only two things it would throw at him no matter how many times he told it ‘no.’
Riddle number two at least did have a my first/my second to guide him. He began brainstorming the words he could think of for creatures of unclear breeding - mutt, mog(gy), mix, cross. And a price… Fee, toll, bill, cost. Right, that gave him MUTTFEE, that famous element of time… He tried working backwards. The events of today. Present. That was about the only thing he could think of. Did sphinxes allow you references books? He could really do with a thesaurus right now…. News. Current. Currents. Currents ran in rivers. Cur was a slur for an ill-bred person! RENT. YES! IT WORKED.
“I GOT ONE!” he yelled, louder than he’d meant to or was probably appropriate for class but there was just that fizzy overjoyed feeling as dots connected and that was why he loved solving riddles because when you were right you knew you were right and it was just the purest kind of joy.
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Kir McLeod, Teppenpaw
Is there treasure?
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Kir McLeod, Teppenpaw
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