--- title: Olympiad: riddles, lipograms and hidden words — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: riddles, lipograms and hidden words», a lesson of the english course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Riddles play with double meanings: "keys" can open locks, or be the black and white keys of a piano, and the riddle wants yo --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/) / Olympiad: riddles, lipograms and hidde… # Olympiad: riddles, lipograms and hidden words Lesson 57 of the english course of Mova's primary school: 14 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/0/) — Riddles play with double meanings: "keys" can open locks, or be the black and white keys of a piano, and the riddle wants you to switch from one meaning to the other. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/1/) — Some riddles hide in the spelling: "ton" backwards is "not", and "short" becomes "shorter" when you add two letters, even though "shorter" is a longer word. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/2/) — Hidden-word puzzles tuck a word across the gaps between words: "Dad's car rots in the shed" hides CARROT, and "The pilot terrified everyone" hides OTTER. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/3/) — A lipogram is writing that leaves out one letter on purpose; leaving out "e", the commonest letter in English, is the hardest classic challenge. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/4/) — Picture Gran in Cork asking, "What word is spelled wrong in every dictionary, ya eejit?" ("eejit" means idiot, said fondly): the answer is "wrong", because the word "wrong" is always spelled W-R-O-N-G; read a riddle word for word, not just for its sense. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/5/) — "What has keys but can't open locks?" A piano: the riddle plays on two meanings of "keys". - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/6/) — "Forwards I'm heavy, backwards I'm not": the answer is "ton", which reversed spells "not". - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/7/) — The five-letter word "short" becomes "shorter" when you add two letters. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/8/) — "Dad's car rots" hides the vegetable CARROT across "car" and "rots". - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/9/) — "The pilot terrified" hides the animal OTTER across "pilot" and "terrified". - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/10/) — A lipogram leaves out one letter on purpose; "e" is the most common letter in English, so a lipogram without "e" is the hardest. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/12/) — "Fast" can mean quick, and it can also mean going without food on purpose ("to fast"). - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/13/) — In the riddle "Brothers and sisters I have none, but this man's father is my father's son", "my father's son" can only be the speaker himself, so the man in the photo is his son. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/14/) — A sentence where every word starts with the same letter is alliteration taken to the limit, like "Six silly snakes slid slowly south, sipping soup." - ← previous: [Olympiad: word puzzles — anagrams, palindromes, word ladders](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/56-olympiad-word-puzzles-anagrams-palindromes-word-ladders/) - next →: [Olympiad: Breakthrough puzzles in made-up languages](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/) - ↑ back to [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/)