Apart from the bawdy humour, there is nothing exceptional about these riddles— the variety is common in every language. More interesting are the riddles that use wordplay — for it’s here that the full glory of Sanskrit shines through. Sanskrit’s structure provides good legroom to frame and solve complicated riddles. Sanskrit poets are also by nature fond of puns and word-gimmicks. Riddle (prahelikā) solving is even included in the traditional list of the sixty four arts catuḥṣaṣṭikalās. Despite all this, the riddle genre never really took off in a big way in Sanskrit. Of all the great poeticians, Danḍī is riddle’s only votary. The total number of published texts dedicated to the matter can be counted on one hand, to my knowledge— and all of them await translation. Vidagdha-mukha-maṇḍanam, kavīndra-karṇābharaṇam and budha-vaktra-maṇḍanam have provided me with many hours of the pleasure-pain of perverse puns. Riddles are also found scattered across works on poetics and subhāśita anthologies.There are fairly detailed methods of classifying and naming these riddles. But as jargon doesn’t add to the fun, let’s not bother about the nomenclature. Here is an interesting riddle—