Dirty-sounding riddles with innocent answers
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 60). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Spread only
Date or witness: Exeter Book copied c.960–990, usually c.970
Region: England
Workbook date-sort bounds: 960 CE to 990 CE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
A cluster of riddles invites sexual guesses while describing ordinary things. Riddle 25, Exeter Book ff.106v–107r, describes something erect in a bed, grasped by a woman; onion is the most popular scholarly solution.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
A cluster of riddles shares a reusable double-meaning format in the Exeter Book.
What remains uncertain
One anthology and analogues in learned traditions do not demonstrate grassroots circulation of the particular surviving English riddles. Ordinary objects described in a text do not identify its audience as ordinary people.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria