The Unanswerable Riddle, and the Silence That Wins

A father and son wed a mother and daughter, and the kinship of their children has no answer at all. For the first time the king cannot speak, and his silence is the very thing that wins the game, and his life.

The Betaal's last riddle has no answer: a father marries a daughter and a son marries a mother, and the kinship of their children cannot be untangled. The king, unable to solve it, walks on in silence, and that silence finally wins the long game. The Betaal then reveals the treachery of the mendicant who sent him, the king turns the trap on its author, and the whole night's wisdom is gathered at last. You judge first, then the king does, one final time.

The Burning Ground

Twenty-four times the corpse had hung in the tree, and twenty-four times the king had climbed for it, carried it, answered its riddle, and lost it again to the branch. And still Vikramaditya had not given up. In the last dark before dawn he climbed once more, cut the corpse down, bound it, shouldered it, and walked. The Vetala settled behind his ear and said: you are the most patient of all men, king. Let me tell you one last tale.

The Last Tale

There was a king named Dharma, and when he died, his queen Candravati and their daughter Lavanyavati fled into the forest to escape their enemies. Deep in the trees, a hunter named Chandasimha and his son Simhaparakrama came upon their footprints in the earth, and followed them, and found the two women. The men resolved to take them as wives, and they chose by the footprints they had followed, thinking the smaller feet must belong to the younger woman. But they judged wrongly, and chose the wrong way about. The son, Simhaparakrama, married the mother, Candravati. And the father, Chandasimha, married the daughter, Lavanyavati. And in time each of the two couples had children of their own.

The Betaal's Riddle

"So, king," said the Vetala. "The father married the daughter; the son married the mother. Each pair has had children. Now tell me this: what relation do the children of the father and the daughter bear to the children of the son and the mother? Untangle their kinship, if you can.

Answer, if you know. You know the rules."

You Be the Judge

Stop here, and try it, exactly as the king did. Follow the threads. The son's wife is the mother of the father's wife; so the son is, in a way, grandfather to his own father's children, and the father is son-in-law to his own son. Follow it further and the lines cross, and double back, and knot into one another until there is no single name left for what any of these children are to any other. This is not a riddle with a hidden answer you have failed to see. It is a riddle with no answer at all.