Children’s Folklore Recent Titles in Greenwood Folklore Handbooks Myth: a handbook

RIDDLES, JOKES, AND ROUTINES OF VICTIMIZATION
Riddles
What has a tongue and it can’t talk?—a shoe.
What has four legs and can’t walk?—a chair.
A thousand lights in a dish, what is it?—stars.

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50 Children’s 
Folklore
What’s black and white and red all over?—a skunk with a heat rash.
White from the outside, green from the inside—a frog sandwich.
These riddles come from John H. McDowell’s 1975 dissertation, “The Speech 
Play and Verbal Art of Chicano Children: An Ethnographic and Sociolinguistic 
Study” (104 – 05). Eight-year-old girls told the first four riddles; the teller of the 
last one was an eight-year-old boy.
The first two riddles confuse the listener through apparent antithesis, while the 
last three offer insufficient details to come up with the correct answer. “A thou-
sand lights in a dish” is an appealing but confusing metaphor. As Mac E. Barrick 
observes, “What’s black and white and red all over?” has circulated actively in the 
childhood underground, with a variety of answers. Comparable riddling ques-
tions can be found in Knapp and Knapp (106 –11) and Bronner (116).
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side!
Why did the turkey cross the road? To prove he wasn’t chicken!
Four-and-a-half-year-old Mathew Baker told these riddles to his sister, student 
collector Courtney Hutchins, in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the spring of 2001. 
Playtime at a preschool in Jamaica, 2006. Photograph by Geoffrey Gould.

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Examples and Texts 51
Riddling questions like these express young children’s desire to learn and their love 
of linguistic tricks. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” is a catch riddle with a 
deceptively simple answer; “Why did the turkey cross the road?” takes that riddle 
one step farther, with a humorous twist. Folklorists of childhood have tended to 
identify the prime age for riddle telling as seven to nine, but Mathew’s enthusias-
tic riddle telling shows that some younger children tell riddles very well.
How do you know a blonde has been at her computer? There’s Tippex [correction 
fluid] all over the screen.
This riddle-joke from a fifth-grade boy (9–10 years old) in Ireland comes from 
the data sample of Sara Staunton, whose “Riddle Use and Comprehension in Irish 
School-Aged Children: A Developmental Study” was published in 2001 (99). 
“Dumb blonde” riddle-jokes have been popular in the United States and in Ireland 
since the 1990s. According to Jeannie B. Thomas, blondes stereotypically seem to 
be slow-witted but attractive and eager to please.
How did the computer criminal get out of jail? He pressed the escape key!
Why did the computer cross the road? Because the chicken programmed it to.
What do you call an elephant that takes a bite out of the computer? A megabyte!
Children in different parts of the world sent these three riddle-jokes to Barbara J. 
Feldman, administrator of http://www.jokesbykids.com, in 2006 and 2007. The 
first came from 10-year-old Joseph in Singapore, the second came from 9-year-
old Blake in Australia, and the third came from 12-year-old Courtney in the 
United States. Both the second and the third riddle reference well-established 
riddles about animals that have made children laugh since the twentieth century 
(Bronner 125–27).
What is black and white and has wheels? A panda on roller skates!
Eight-year-old Kirsten, who lives in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, sent me her favorite 
riddle on e-mail in February 2008. Riddles that begin with the words “What is 
black and white . . .” offer children endless possibilities for classifying people, ani-
mals, and things in humorous ways. Many answers to this riddling question can 
be found on the Internet. Early in 2008, a Google search of the riddle’s first six 
words generated 369,000 hits.
Jokes