Riddle For The Ages / Literature

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Riddles for the Ages in Literature.

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By Author:

• Who was the author of the immortal Old English epic Beowulf? Analysis suggests that it was definitely written by a single person, but despite how influential the poem is, that person has never been identified and likely never will.
• Was Homer a real person or were The Iliad and The Odyssey written by multiple writers? Were the poems composed in 8th-century Greece or are they even older and merely written down in Greek centuries later? Chances are that we'll never know.
• Who wrote the Voynich manuscript, what language is it in (if any), and what does it say?
• William Shakespeare's Sonnets: The "Dark Lady" who inspired many of the sonnets may never truly be identified, although there have been many suspects named by scholars. Likewise for the Fair Young Man who may or may not have been Shakespeare's lover.

By Work:

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:
  • "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" The riddle was never intended to have an answer, prompting many fans throughout the ages to supply their own answers:
    • Sam Loyd's "Because Poe wrote on both" is the most popular answer.
    • "Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes." Sam Loyd again.
    • Stephen King's The Shining has a rather good answer for that: "The higher the fewer, of course."
    • Carroll himself eventually supplied his own answer, but only after years of people asking: "Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front." Note that "nevar" is "raven" spelled backwards.
    • "Because there is a B in both and an N in neither." (Aldous Huxley)
    • "Because it slopes with a flap." (Cyril Pearson)
    • One Two Lumps strip both re-uses the above "Poe wrote on both", and also suggests "Both have inky quills."
    • From Sir Apropos of Nothing, "Because it is only with quills that they truly take flight."
  • Another one: Was Through the Looking Glass Alice's dream, or the Red King's dream?
• All You Need Is Kill: What is Rita Vrataski's real name?
• From Animorphs:
  • In book #41, who or what was testing Jake, and why? Also, what was the being that managed to drive Crayak out of his home galaxy? Admittedly, this becomes somewhat less mind-blowing when you learn that Crayak wasn't sufficiently advanced at the time.
  • Speaking of Crayak, The Ellimist Chronicles never gives the Crayak a backstory. He just shows up midway through (before the Ellimist has all his powers), and while he's not quite a godlike being yet, he's still powerful enough to have a planetoid that also acts as a giant spaceship. Why he's evil and intent on wiping everyone out is never explained. We also don't learn any more about the more powerful being who exiled him, as that incident is never brought up in the book, suggesting the Ellimist didn't learn it until later.
  • In book #48, did Rachel kill David or not? The book ends with the two of them staring at each other, David begging her to do it, and Rachel contemplating whether or not killing him is the right thing to do.
  • What are the Kelbrids mentioned in the final book? despite allegedly being the Andalite's mortal enemies, they were never brought up before. The Andalites have also never actually seen a Kelbrid, meaning they could just be a hoax for all we know. This also dovetails with the mystery of "The One": was he affiliated with the Kelbrids somehow? Were they just something he made up? something else altogether?
  • The series ends with a Diabolus ex Machina: In the last three pages a figure called "The One" shows up, is revealed to have assimilated Ax, and there's a Bolivian Army Ending. Aside from the obvious "did the Animorphs live?" (Michael Grant says yes), there's the question of what the heck The One is. Frustratingly, fan attempts to make it make sense by connecting it to Crayak, his intergalactic enemy, or the book #41 mystery have all been shot down by Word of God.
• The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga: Did Meroven's war mages mean to intentionally destroy the source of all magic in the Ascendant Kingdoms with their Fantastic Nuke, or was it simply an unforeseen consequence of something they did for military reasons?
• At the Mountains of Madness: What lies beyond the mountains, that even the Elder Things dare not mention? Dyer might caught a glimpse of it, and was instantly driven mad.
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: What becomes of Lucy Gray Baird who seemingly falls of the face of the Earth at the end of the book? Does she die when Snow shoots her in the woods? Does she survive and make it to what the audience knows is District 13 in the north? Does she die trying to get there? The climax takes place in August so it seems unlikely she would have been able to find it by the time cold weather set in. Notably the William Wordsworth poem she is named after has its protagonist disappear in a blizzard. Does she just live in the woods the rest of her life? Or does she come back to District 12 under an assumed name after some time? That seems unlikely as she is notable as a Hunger Games victor. Snow decides to act like she never existed so her fate is unclear.
• The Transformers book "Battle Beneath the Ice" involves Hot Rod and a few humans stumbling upon a hidden city in Antarctica, then learning that the city dwellers are robots who plan to program the aggressive instincts of humans, Autobots and Decepticons into themselves and conquer Earth. So who created the city dwellers and what happened to them? And why have the city dwellers waited four million years to conquer Earth, when their cameras can clearly show them more than just Antartica, thus they could have tried to program the warrior instinct into themselves before now?
• Blood Meridian:
  • What is Judge Holden? Simply a very strange (and vile) man? A demonic being? War itself?
  • The Kid's final fate in the jakes, with the implication that it's too horrible to be described.
• The Chasing Vermeer series has a number of bizarre happenings, several of which are unexplained, as befitting the question of if everything happens for a reason being one of the series' Central Themes:
  • Chasing Vermeer: Was the conveniently timed dream Petra has that gives her a major "Eureka!" Moment in the art theft case just coincidence, or evidence of supernatural forces at work?
  • The Wright 3: Who threw a copy of The Invisible Man out the window of a speeding train in the middle of the night and why? And where did those suspicious footprints come from?
  • The Calder Game: Did Arthur Wish fall into the lake by accident, or was he pushed? The police tell him as he recovers from his injury that his wounds were consistent with being deliberately hit on the head and thrown in, but he insists it was accidental and the only person with a known motive to harm him, Big Bad Nashton Rip, explicitly only double-crosses him after he falls in. So were the police mistaken or was there a second, unknown party gunning for Arthur as well?
  • The finale, Pieces and Players, written several years after the original trilogy, subverts it for the most part, leaning more explicitly into the various lucky coincidences being the result of the heroes having supernatural help, but it still never explains who killed Mr. Sharpe, a question that's been open since the first book. The characters float the idea that the Villain of the Week may be responsible, but the art theft in this installment turns out to be a harmless publicity stunt for a struggling museum that went horribly wrong.
• The Dark Tower: What lies atop the Tower? Gan Himself? The Place Beyond the Path? Nothing at all? Now that Roland has the Horn of Gilead, he may finally find out, but the readers never do.
• In David Copperfield, Ham Peggotty swims out to sea to save a shipwrecked man from drowning. Shortly afterwards, both their bodies are washed up on the shore and the other man turns out to be Steerforth, who seduced and then cruelly abandoned Ham's fiancée Emily. It will never be known whether Ham tried to save Steerforth or drowned him.
• The Detective is Already Dead: Did Siesta and Kimizuka have Their First Time when they shared a bed?
• Discworld:
  • Sir Terry Pratchett was very fond of jokes of the form "Make up a word and say it refers to something very important and we're really missing out by not knowing what it is". Therefore the true nature of slood, fingles, panipunitiplasty, bissonomy, tubso, and blit will never be known.
  • In Thief of Time, what exactly is the deal with Jason's homelife? All we know is that he acts out a lot in class, and that a parents' evening with Susan ended with his mother chasing his father with a chair, following which they both sent Miss Susan bunches of flowers.
  • All we'll ever know about what the University kitchen's oven was transformed into, in The Light Fantastic, is that it was A) strong and mobile enough to crash through a wall, and B) awful enough to leave the sole, maddened witness moaning about "the horrible knuckles".
• In The Divine Comedy, it is principally impossible for anyone to learn why only Peter Damian was sent to meet Dante on Saturn, except God. Even the highest angel in Heaven cannot pierce the Deep Mind so deeply to fully understand His reasoning in instances of this kind.
• Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis has been interpreted in different ways since 1899. The story is about a man that tells the story of his life, his love for Capitu (his wife) and his doubts about her adultery. No one can ever tell if the protagonist was right, and his wife cheated on him, or if madness and jealousy had simply taken their toll. Even today.
• Don't Look Back: Just how did Cassie obtain the birth certificate that proved Steven was her father, and what prompted her to search for it to begin with? She never told anyone, not even her own mother, and thus took it to her grave.
• Why did Dracula move to the US in the 1970s? This is a minor Running Gag in Fred Saberhagen's New Dracula series. Several times someone asks Dracula why he left Europe and he starts to reply with something like, "I came here because I like your—", only to be interrupted before he can finish by an American talking about something else.
• Dune: During the novel, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen fathers a daughter on Lady Fenring. The following books make no mention of the girl or what fate befell her.
• Eleanor & Park:
  • What were the three words Eleanor wrote to Park in the end? All we know that it was a positive message due to Park's reaction.
  • What happened to Eleanor's mother and siblings after they left Richie? They aren't at his house, but they're not with Eleanor in St. Paul, either.
  • How did Richie find out about Park? And for that matter, how did he get access to write on Eleanor's textbooks without her or anyone else catching him?
  • What's Eleanor's father's name? It's never revealed, and he's only ever called "her father."
• The Elves and the Otterskin by Elizabeth H. Boyer: Who is Eilifer, and what's his secret? Ivarr is forced to help a group of outcast elves, who are supposed to be incompetent as both warriors and mages. As they unravel the truth about the political conspiracy they're accidentally at the heart of, they gradually develop both competency and confidence. Hints are dropped throughout the story that Eilifer is lying about his competency level from the beginning, is both extremely powerful and extremely reluctant to use his power, and that he has some kind of connection to the Elf King. When he lets three witches turn him into a horse for hag-riding to protect their usual victim, the witches are horrified to discover the new horse they've created is grey because only the Elf King has grey horses. Ivarr's group — and the witches themselves — are amazed to discover that Eilifer is powerful enough to defeat three powerful witches single-handedly, but he and the witches won't talk about it. At the end of the story, Ivarr acknowledges that Eilifer remains the story's unsolved mystery, to which Eilifer simply smiles.
  Ivarr: What do you really believe, Eilifer?
  Eilifer: I believe we'd better hurry back or Finnvard will be prostrated with the fear that we're lost. Isn't it amazing how his powers of precognition are developing? Sometimes all it takes to jolt a slow learner is a crisis or an accident of some sort. And Skapti is amazing, isn't he?
  Ivarr: All right, I won't ask you any more questions.
  Eilifer: Good. What a relief. I wouldn't answer them anyway.
• The Fault in Our Stars: What happened after the end of An Imperial Affliction, the in-universe novel that stops mid-sentence? Gus and Hazel meet the book's author, but he turns out to be a total Jerkass who very bluntly tells them that it doesn't matter what happened because it's fiction and ceased to exist after it ended. This doesn't satisfy them, but they never do get an answer.
• In Fifty Shades of Grey, why did the press-averse Christian Grey agree to be interviewed for a college newspaper?
• In the Sherlock Holmes story The Five Orange Pips, while Holmes's explanation certainly makes sense, the mystery is never conclusively solved, as the primary suspects vanish without a trace with only vague hints as to their fate.
• Gnomes: Where do the gnomes go when they die of old age? And what was the magical occurrence that caused gnomes to be unable to have more than two children?
• Good Omens:
  • Was it all part of the ineffable plan, or did everyone just get lucky? If we knew that, it wouldn't be ineffable, would it?
  • On a more trivial note, Madame Tracy's third job. There's an ad in the paper saying she's available as a medium every day except Thursday, and another in a magazine saying she's available as a dominatrix every day except Thursday. Newt learns that there's a third ad in a phone box, but when he asks what that involves, she just says "Thursdays".
• Great Expectations: Do Pip and Estella have a future together after Miss Havisham's death? This is only in the Revised Ending; Dickens' original intention for the book was a definite "no," with Estella marrying someone else.
• Harry Potter:
  • In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, what was behind the impossible-to-open door in the Ministry of Magic, that not even the Alohomora charm could unlock? It's hinted the Ministry are researching The Power of Love in there, but why that room alone would require such powerful defenses is never revealed.
  • In the backstory to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, what did young Tom Riddle do to his peers in the cave that traumatised them so badly?
  • Were the Deathly Hallows really created by The Grim Reaper, or did the Peverell brothers actually invent them? If the brothers created them, how were they able to get them to break the laws of magic?
  • What happens if someone unites the three Deathly Hallows? Do they really become the master of death and if so, does it mean real immortality? Harry and Dumbledore, the only two people who've for certain handled all three, ^note Harry had the invisibly cloak for most of the series but doesn't get the other two until the end. He gets the resurrection stone at the beginning of the last book but doesn't know what it is until the end. And while he became master of the Elder Wand about 2/3 of the way through the same book, he wasn't physically in possession of it because it was in Dumbledore's tomb and then later in Voldemort's hands. Only Dumbledore and Grindelwald knew he was the previous master before Malfoy and Grindelwald refuses to tell Voldemort that before the latter kills him. Dumbledore had possession of the wand for some fifty years before his death. He had the cloak for ten before giving it back to Harry as a Christmas gift, and he only found the resurrection stone the summer before he died. don't believe any of it's true but neither had been in physical possession of the three of them at the same time, so there's not a definitive answer.
  • What happened to Lavender Brown? She was last seen being mauled by the cannibalistic werewolf Fenrir Greyback, and the film version in particular strongly implies she didn't make it, but not only has Word of God not offered a conclusive answer, it has changed its answer, with Pottermore first calling her dead, then missing, before finally deleting all reference to her fate entirely.
  • One of the most (in)famous questions in the franchise: How is a Horcrux made? All we know is that one of the prerequisites for creating one requires you to murder someone.
  • Did Barty Crouch Jr. actively torture Neville's parents, or was he just an accomplice? He says he didn't do it, but he was convicted nonetheless. Sirius says he's not sure and thinks he could have genuinely been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dumbledore points out that there isn't a witness. Neville's parents no longer have the facilities to give testimony, and Neville himself was a toddler. While posing as Moody, he shows no remorse for what he might have done when he used the same curse he did on them in front of Neville. By the time of the fourth book, Voldemort calls him his most loyal servant, but given that Crouch had been in Azkaban and under the Imperius Curse for about fifteen years at that point, he could have been radicalized in prison or gone mad from the curse. Or he could have truly been a fanatic all along (especially given what a Master Actor he is) and cried Crocodile Tears at the trial for sympathy from his father. When his ruse is uncovered, there are more important matters at hand. Then he's quickly fed to a Dementor, leaving the truth ultimately ambiguous.
  • What did the centaurs do to Umbridge after capturing her? By the time Dumbledore rescues her, she doesn't show any signs of physical damage, but she's temporarily catatonic from whatever she endured, and she panics when the students taunt her with hoofbeat sounds. (One infamous fan interpretation claims that the centaurs did to Umbridge what centaurs were known to do to human women in general in Classical Mythology, even though the wizarding world's wise centaurs are a far cry from their savage mythical inspirations.)
  • What did the Muggle boys do Ariana Dumbledore that drove her mad? Aberforth says they “attacked” her when they caught her doing magic outside and she couldn’t do the trick again but he never elaborates as to how exactly they attacked her. Whatever it was so bad that their dad willingly went to prison under the guise of Fantastic Racism in retaliation.
  • What happened in the run-up to Ariana's death? Who killed her: Albus, Aberforth, or Gellert Grindelwald? From Aberforth's POV, he confronted them over their plans to take Ariana on their travels with them since he believed she wasn't fit to travel. Grindelwald got mad about what he saw as Aberforth not understanding his brilliant brother and because he felt they were doing what was best for Ariana by trying to make it so she wouldn't have to hide anymore. He says he grabbed his wand, Grindelwald escalated by using the Cruciatus curse on him, Albus tried to defend him, and Ariana got caught in the middle with Aberforth thinking she was trying to help. Albus's POV follows the same broad strokes (an argument that escalated with her caught in the middle) with some tweaks. He says that Aberforth drew his wand, he drew his, "Gellert just laughed", and they didn't hear her coming down the stairs. Why he omits the crucio-ing and tries to shift the blame for escalating from what Aberforth saw as Grindelwald doing it to himself is unclear. We've yet to hear Grindelwald's take on the fight but all three of them certainly are all unreliable sources who have reasons to shift the blame onto someone else. They also don't know which of them was the one who actually killed her. Harry thinks about asking if they'd ever found out but decides it's not his business.
• The Haunting of Hill House: What is haunting Hill House? The characters (and readers) leave with no answers.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: What is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything? And why is 42 the answer? Simultaneously knowing both the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer would cause the universe to rearrange itself into something even more incomprehensible. This may have happened already.
• Horatio Hornblower: Lieutenant Hornblower leaves unanswered a question that formed a key plot point in the novel: How did Captain Sawyer fall down the hatchway? Did he fall? Was he pushed? If so, by whom? This is the only Hornblower novel not to be told from the titular character's perspective, and in the story itself, Lieutenant Hornblower is quick to begin an investigation of the incident during the confusion left by the Captain's incapacitation, with the only other witness to what happened being his assistant. By the end of the book, the other man has died in a shipwreck, and Hornblower himself never reveals the answer.
• The Inspector Morse short story "Morse's Greatest Mystery". The initial crime (a theft) is never resolved, or even substantially investigated.
• In Iris on Rainy Days, the robot protagonist Iris was mutilated by a snuff fetishist and abandoned on Professor Wendy's property. What convinced Wendy to take her in was Iris calling out "sister" before her circuits shut down. It's never explained why she did that, or how she even knew what a sister was.
• James and the Giant Peach: Exactly what would have happened if James had not accidentally dropped the bag from the mysterious man, and had followed his directions about swallowing them in a glass of water with hairs added?
• In Octavia Butler's Kindred, the protagonist Dana finds herself repeatedly pulled back in time to Antebellum America when her ancestor Rufus' life is in danger. It's the only supernatural phenomenon in the book and is never explained; Dana gives up on trying to understand it.
• The title question of Frank R. Stockton's "The Lady, or the Tiger?" A king forces significant criminals to choose one of two doors in his public arena. Behind one is a desirable woman that he must marry. Behind the other is a ravenous tiger that will tear him to pieces. One criminal is the lover of the princess, who knows which door leads where- but also knows that the lady is a rival of hers. She gestures to one of the doors, but the story ends just as he opens it. The story caused something of a sensation in the years following its release, with readers clamoring to wring an answer from the author. A common writing assignment in classrooms is to supply an answer to the question. The sequel story, "The Discourager of Hesitancy", doesn't answer the question either, beyond a hint that there is no canonical answer: it's whatever the reader decides.
• Was the titular Alaska's death in Looking for Alaska an accident or a suicide?
• Magical Girl Raising Project: What are the real names of certain characters, like Pukin, Pythie, and the First Lapis Lazuline?
• In Malodrax, both Lysander and Corvin wonder for some time whether the "people" who used to live on the eponymous planet are a native alien species or heavily mutated humans. It's never resolved, and Lysander isn't interested in returning to Malodrax ever again.
• In Algernon Blackwood's The Man Who Found Out, an explorer discovers the ancient Tablets of the Gods, reputed to explain the true purpose of human life. Once translated, their revelations cause him and the friend who inherits the Tablets to succumb to despair, then go to extreme lengths to conceal their contents: contents that the reader never learns, apparently mercifully.
• The Mad Scientists' Club: At the end of "The Big Egg", Henry admits that the club will never know if the eponymous dinosaur egg really hatched or if a vengeful Harmon Muldoon stole the egg and faked its hatching (again, only successfully this time) in a Team Rocket Wins moment.
• The Metamorphosis: Why did Gregor turn into an insect?
• A gag in More Information Than You Require involves Hodgman's encounter with director Peter Berg on a plane and finding out he had two copies of Dune with him on the plane, because he was planning on making a Dune movie. This does not explain why he had two copies with him. This becomes a brief running gag, in which Hodgman provides even less helpful explanations that still don't explain why he would have two copies of the book, leaving it a mystery to us all. ^note Well, it was probably because he was annotating one copy all to hell and wanted a clean one to read. But that's not as much fun as wild speculation.
• Moby-Dick:
  • Is the White Whale just a dumb beast like Starbuck believes and has Ahab gone completely mad in his quest for revenge? Or is Moby-Dick truly a Animalistic Abomination and is destroying it is the only way man will seize control of his place in the universe?
  • What does Steelkilt say that stops his captain from flogging him, even after threatening murder doesn't work?
• Monk & Robot: What caused all the robots in the world to suddenly gain sentience one day? Dex, the first human to meet with a robot in centuries, asks about it, and Mosscap admits it has no idea, and neither do any of the other robots. Humans mostly think one of the gods did it, but aren't in agreement over which god, or what their motives may have been. For its part, Mosscap doesn't think the answer actually matters; what matters now is enjoying life.
• More Than This leaves a couple of mysteries unresolved at the end of the book: What caused the fire that burnt down the area on the other side of the train tracks? Who or what is the Driver, and why did he save Seth's life, after seemingly trying to kill him?
• In Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot finds explanations for all the discrepancies and mysteries he's come across during his investigation ... except whom he'd seen wearing the scarlet kimono. He makes a good guess who owns it, but also concludes that suspect never left her compartment.
• What was The Name of the Rose?
• The Neverending Story: Who or what is the mysterious power behind the Nothing who sent Gmork to kill Atreyu?
• Nero Wolfe:
  • One story has Archie attending the funeral of a murdered potential client, and he sees a very rare and expensive orchid which could have only come from Wolfe sent to the funeral procession. This is completely out of character for Wolfe and makes Archie take a special interest in the case, but he never does find out why Wolfe sent the orchid and the final chapter has him listing possibilities (Wolfe and the woman knew each other during World War I but she didn't remember, Wolfe felt guilty for having failed to prevent her death when he might have heard something which gave him an inkling of where the danger came from, Wolfe sent to the flowers to the funeral just to Troll Archie due to knowing he'd be in attendance).
  • Much of Wolfe's past falls under this, including his childhood, his parents, his military career (it is implied that he fought in the Serbian campaign of World War One, and that the experience left him with sufficient PTSD to turn him into the schedule-loving homebody we know now), and the details of a marriage to a Femme Fatale that tried to kill him.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four:
  • The book raises the question of whether Emmanuel Goldstein and his revolution against the Party actually exists, or if they're simply a fabrication the Party uses as a target for the population's hatred and as bait to weed out dissidents. O'Brien states quite firmly and adamantly that Winston will never learn the truth about this.
  • O'Brien also tells Winston that it doesn't matter if Big Brother is an actual person or simply a representation of the Party, although in the context of the story it's probably the latter. Seeing as how the Party changes records, it's hard to tell how much truth there is in any claim they make.
  • Does the appendix at the end of the book reveal that the Party did in fact eventually fall?
• In One Hundred Years of Solitude, no one, including the reader, ever finds out who killed José Arcadio, though he had made many enemies by taking people's land.
• In Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides, a pirate decides he'd rather be shot than hanged, and asks his Navy captors' leader an Armor-Piercing Question ("Is it true what Panda Beecher once told me about you?") that implies that the captain is either a smuggler or a sexual deviant. This provokes a fight in which the enraged captain is killed. After escaping, the pirate explains his ploy to his accomplice, and admits that he hadn't actually known anything about the captain; he just knew lots of Navy officers smuggled for Beecher or patronized Beecher's whorehouse, and they'll never know which offense the dead man assumed he'd been accused of.
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower is mainly structured in the form of a long series of letters written by the main character, Charlie. We never find out just whom he's writing to, and the person never enters the actual narrative; all we're told is that Charlie trusts them because they "didn't have sex with that person at that party even though [they] could have."
• The Plot Against America: What happened to President Lindbergh? Was he kidnapped? Did he crash? Did someone sabotage his plane? If it's the last one, who did? The British, desperate to have an American president who will help them? The Nazis for not going far enough? His own government to stop him from entering the war to help the Axis Powers? These are all ideas presented in the novel without a definitive answer.
• In The Princess Bride, William Goldman (who claims to be merely editing the original Morgenstern) notes that the original manuscript ended on a "Lady or the Tiger"-esque note, with Humperdinck and his cronies pursuing the four fugitives, who experience a number of setbacks. He further claims that it's left permanently open-ended as to whether or not they got away and lived Happily Ever After, but that as far as he's concerned, they did. Of course, Goldman is the actual author of the book, so the ending isn't really ambiguous. For an anniversary edition of the book, Goldman included the first chapter of the "sequel" (which, according to his Direct Line to the Author, he can't publish in full because the rights to the original work were given to Stephen King instead). The chapter picks up where the previous book supposedly left off and then goes in a very strange and fantastical direction.
• The Railway Series: How and when did Rheneas get his cab?
• The Ribbajack:
  • Who are Archibald Smifft's unseen parent(s), only identified as "X Smifft"? They're incredibly rich, leaving an infant Archibald at the doorstep of a boarding school in an expensive bassinet and paying for his continued stay there with a bag of rubies each school term for 11 years. They also have terrible spelling skills, as seen by the barely-readable note they left in said bassinet (which is odd, because with that much money they should at least have been able to afford a decent education). Clearly they're still alive and keeping an eye on Archibald in some manner, if they remember to send the school a bag of rubies every term to keep him there, but why couldn't or wouldn't they raise him themselves, and why did they never even bother to contact him?
  • How did Leah Edwina Tranter die? She was a Creepy Child and Lonely Rich Kid found dead at the age of 14, hidden behind a bookcase in her family home, holding a rose in one hand. All the servants swore they had not seen her for several days and assumed she went off to stay with relatives. Some locals believe she poisoned herself.
• Room, Who was Old Nick and what was his real name? What was Ma's real name for that matter? The movie only answers the last question.
• In the YA novel A Semi-definitive List of Worst Nightmares, the Solar family believe they have been supernaturally cursed to experience extreme misfortune, and indeed it often does seem like fate's out to get them. By the end, however, they come to accept that there are rational explanations for all the weirdness surrounding them... with the sole and distinct exception of why one particular secondary character, an Army buddy of the family patriarch who, supposedly, placed the "curse" to begin with, doesn't seem to age. Toward the end he flatly denies that there's anything supernatural about him, but still offers no explanation for why he still looks like the same gawky young man the grandfather met in Vietnam despite now being in his late sixties.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events loves this. More than a decade later, most of the mysteries were unexpectedly resolved by the live-action series, likely due to this trope being harder to do in a visual rather than literary medium. Most of the characters who ended the books on an Uncertain Doom note are also given concrete fates.
  • What were the exact circumstances surrounding the death of the children's parents?
  • What was the cause of the schism in VFD? What was the exact cause of the death of Olaf's parents? All we're told is that it involved poisonous darts and it's hinted that the children's mother was a part of it. In the live-action series, his father was accidentally killed by Beatrice during a quarrel with Olaf, which also led to the Schism and Lemony Snicket being framed for murder.
  • What happened to the people living on the island? Did they reach the horseradish factory in time, or did they die of the spore poisoning?
  • What happened to Fiona, the hook-handed man, Hector, Duncan, Isadora, and Quigley?
  • What is the Great Unknown? It's hinted by the prequel All the Wrong Questions to be the Bombinating Beast, a Cthulhu-esque urban legend, a statue of which is the story's main MacGuffin. This is indeed the case in the live-action series.
  • What is in the Sugar Bowl, exactly? In the live-action series, it's the antidote for the bad guys' fungal bioweapon (which has always been the most popular fan theory).
  • What was the fate of the guests at the hotel?
  • Who was the father of Kit Snicket's baby? In the live-action series, it's (quite logically) her boyfriend Dewey Denouement.
  • There's a scene on an island that everything washes up on eventually. They list quite a few objects and vaguely hint of the stories behind them.
  • One thing still mysterious even with the series's Adaptation Expansion is the exact nature and aims of The Man With a Beard But No Hair and The Woman With Hair But No Beard, the sinister couple pulling the strings behind the Dark Side of VFD and quite possibly a good bit of The City's apparatus of law and government as well. The series shows a bit more of their past, with a flashback depicting their manipulating Olaf's grief after the aforementioned Accidental Murder of his father to push him off the slippery slope and ignite the Schism, but their true names, origins, and ultimate goals are still left up in the air.
• The Shining: Who is the Manager of the hotel that the ghosts refer to?
• What are the origins of the Green Lady in The Silver Chair?
• Skellig: It's never made clear exactly who or what Skellig really is, especially since he dances around the issue when asked. If he isn't an angel, then how has he managed to survive all alone in that garage for who knows how long? And if he is an angel, why is he on earth and in that specific house?
• Stanisław Lem's Solaris: Why did the planet send the replicas of people? The main theme of the novel is that we can't find out, because humans can't comprehend a truly alien intelligence.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: The Known World has had numerous oddities and obscurities in its history and in its lands, but some definitely stand out above others.
  • Who is Jon Snow's mother? The only person who knows about it is his father, Eddard Stark, but he refuses to disclose it. His wife, Catelyn, tried to ask him about it early in their marriage. According to Cat, that was the only moment in their otherwise happy marriage where he went into a rage, and since then Cat has been scared of doing that again. No wonder she is so resentful of Jon. Since Ned dies at the end of the first book, the secret may have been lost forever.
  • What really happened during the tragedy at the Tower of Joy? Ned and Howland Reed found the former's sister, Lyanna, dying after her abduction by Rhaegar Targaryen there. That part is uncontested, but people believe that there's something much more important (even possibly world-changing) happening there, because Lyanna's reported last words were "promise me, Ned". Again, since Ned dies, this leaves Howland as the only person who knows what the hell happened that fateful day.
  • What was the true fate of Princess Rhaenys Targaryen? What were the contents of the letter sent by the Dornish to King Aegon I (three years after her death) that caused him to fly to Dragonstone without warning? And what did he see or encounter at Dragonstone that made him return and immediately sign the peace treaty with Dorne, giving them their independence?
  • Who killed Maegor the Cruel? Many theories are suggested, including suicide and the Iron Throne itself doing the deed, but ultimately nobody cared enough to find an answer; it was enough that he was dead.
  • Who was the Shepherd, the mysterious man who rallied the smallfolk of King's Landing to storm the Dragonpit, and why did he do what he did?
  • What happened to Nettles and Sheepstealer after they fled from the Dance of the Dragons? We're given some hints that she settled in the Mountains of the Moon and had something to do with the Burned Men there, but that's it. And for that matter, is Nettles a Dragonseed (bastard Targaryen child), or just the only person in Westeros to apply basic animal taming principles to dragons?
  • What really caused the Tragedy at Summerhall? Many differing accounts give varying theories; some suggest the king was trying to hatch the petrified dragon eggs his family had, others suggest it was wildfire, while others believe it was an act of arson by pyromancers. While the dragon eggs are widely considered to have been a crucial factor in the tragedy, exactly what happened and who caused it remains a mystery.
  • Which of various contradicting sources Archmaester Gyldayn uses are correct, if any?
  • How old is Oldtown exactly; and who built it? If the isle the Hightower is built upon is known as Battle Isle because of a legendary battle that took place upon it; who fought it, when and why? What is the origin of the fortress carved from queer black stone? Originally, it was believed to be Valyrian in origin, but its bland and featureless design doesn't reflect the famed Valyrian stone masonry. Many historians and maesters have worked to answer these questions, but all that remains is speculation.
  • Word of God has confirmed the fan theory that Doom of Valyria was the eruption of the Fourteen Flames, which still leaves unanswered questions, such as what exactly caused the eruption, what happened to Aerea Targaryen that she had to suffer a Cruel and Unusual Death simply for visiting that place? And on a related note, what was able to injure Balerion the Black Dread, the oldest and largest dragon alive?
  • History tells of Aurion, the self-proclaimed Emperor of the Valyrian Freehold and one of the few dragonlords to have survived the Doom. He raised an army 30,000 strong of Qohorik colonists and rode atop his dragon back south to the remnants of Old Valyria along with his host of men, but both he and his army never returned and no trace of them was ever found. What happened to them and why did they never return?
  • Why did the Free Folk/Wildlings end up living north of the Wall?
  • Did the Night's King and the Corpse Queen really exist?
  • What exactly lies within the continent of Ulthos and why is it the only continent that has yet to be explored or civilised when even the Green Hell of Sothoryos has been (slightly) mapped?
  • Asshai-by-the-Shadow is a city steeped in mystery, from how large it really is to what actually goes on behind closed doors, but of all its sinister oddities, the biggest question is a simple, yet no less disturbing one: why are there no children in Asshai?
• This is the whole point of Special Topics In Calamity Physics, which sets up dozens of mysteries and hardly answers any of them. At the very end of the book, the narrator gives a "quiz" in which she asks readers to come to their own conclusions on what happened. Ultimately, the implication is that it doesn't matter, because the narrator has moved on and grown through the experience.
• Star Wars Legends: What, exactly, happened in the thousand-year-long "dark age" before the rise of Darth Bane? This is far and away the least represented period of Galactic history in the fiction, notable only for the Knight Errant comic and a few standalone short stories and RPG adventures. Everything fans know about it comes from the reference books, which describe it as an anarchic time marked by feuding Sith Lords and a virtually powerless Republic splinted into various territories ruled by Jedi Lords.
• In Judy Blume's Superfudge, neither Peter nor his parents have any idea where Fudge learned how to spell "Maine", and trying to get a straight answer out of the 4-year-old would have been an exercise in futility.
• Tatu and Patu: Where is Oddsville, and what is it like? One of the books gives various ideas, including that it's an underwater planet or the inside of a little kid's pacifier, but they're just theories presented by other people.
• Tolkien's Legendarium has a lot. Some of them are because J. R. R. Tolkien constantly meddled with his lore and didn't come up with a satisfactory answer himself before his death, but some of them were intentional. (The unintentional ones are starred.)
  • What is Tom Bombadil? Tolkien has said, in response to speculation, that he is not Eru Ilúvatar, the god of Middle-earth, which still leaves a lot of other possibilities. According to some letters he sent to friends, Tolkien himself wasn't even sure what Tom was, and in these letters he seems to say that Tom is meant to be a representation of the fact that any Fictional Universe will realistically have characters and elements that are irrelevant to the current plot and which The Law of Conservation of Detail thus forces the writer to leave out.
  • What other evil creatures, which were worse than the Balrog according to Gandalf, were buried under Khazad-dûm?
  • Who were the Ringwraiths before they received the Nine Rings? We know that three (probably including the Witch-king) were Númenóreans, and that Khamûl (the only Ringwraith to be named anywhere by Tolkien) was an Easterling king. Other than that, nothing.
  • Where did Radagast and the blue wizards go? Tolkien suggested in a letter that the Blue Wizards went wrong and formed various magic cults. Or in a later essay he speculated they helped combat Sauron's influence in the East.
  • What happened to the Entwives?
    • Early in Lord of the Rings Sam passes along a second-hand report of a possible Ent-like creature roaming the northern borders of the Shire; sadly no further information is ever forthcoming.
  • Where did the Hobbits come from? Tolkien states that Hobbits are an offshoot of Men rather than a separate race, but from aside the fact they were first recorded living in Vales of Anduin in the early Third Age and a kinship between their language and Rohirric no real origin is ever given.
  • Was Sam allowed to cross the sea to Valinor? According to his relatives, the answer is yes, but no-one actually knows.
  • Where do the souls of dead Men go when they leave the Halls of Mandos? Not even the Valar know.
  • What was the "First Fall of Man" that Tolkien claims happened before Men arrived in Beleriand? A folktale of questionable accuracy from The History of Middle-earth mentions that shortly after awakening, the first Men worshiped Morgoth, but this never made it into The Silmarillion.
  • Did Amandil reach Valinor?
  • What is the origin of Ungoliant? What really became of her after her brief alliance with Morgoth? Earendel killed her in a early draft but The Silmarillion suggests she might have devoured herself.
  • What happened to Eluréd and Elurín?
  • Are Maglor and Daeron still wandering around Middle-earth?
• In The Tripods books, there are suggestions that the Sphere Chase is more than just a sport. Our heroes first become aware of it when they encounter two tripods practicing for it while on patrol. After Ruki is captured, he refuses to discuss the game, even though he does answer questions about the city and his race which are far more damaging. An initial theory is that the tripods could be mating, however this is proved incorrect when the main characters find out the Tripods are just vehicles for aliens, not aliens themselves.
• In Ulysses, Mrs. Breen's husband inexplicably receives a postcard with only the letters "U.P." written on it, and he decides to take the sender to court for 10,000 pounds of libel damages. It's never revealed what "U.P." stands for, who sent it to him, or why he's so angry about it.
• Villains by Necessity: The details of Sir Pryce's Test remain unrevealed during the book. As he never speaks, this isn't surprising. Even after he does start talking, it's about something far more important. In any case, since Blackmail is Sir Pryse, he would have gone in knowing what the test was, and thus wouldn't have had trouble with it.
• The Virgin Suicides: Why did the girls kill themselves? The closest we get to it is one of them telling a psychiatrist "clearly you've never been a 13-year-old girl".
• We Can't Rewind: How exactly did the "Freaky Friday" Flip between the parents and children occur, and will they ever find a way to reverse it? By the end of the book, they still haven't found any way to do it, and narrator Don Richards strongly implies that they've given up trying to answer these questions.
• In The Westing Game, practically all the novel's mysteries are wrapped up by the end, except the identity of the person who stole Sydelle's shorthand notebook. The thief who's been purloining other items in Sunset Towers comes under suspicion initially, but it turns out that it's Madame Hoo, who'd known nothing about the Game at the time, and hence had no motive to steal a half-used notebook with no resale value.
• The Wheel of Time: There are certain questions about the story's end (most notably who or what Nakomi is and how Rand was able to light his pipe without the One Power) that Robert Jordan specificly stated were put in as mysteries and were never going to be answered.
• A Wrinkle in Time: At the end, the Mrs. Ws vanish halfway through saying "You see, we have to-" and the children never learn what they have to do.
• In World War Z no one knows what happened to North Korea during the Great Panic. Satellites and South Korea military document that before the outbreak military and even civilian movements became increasingly rare... until no one showed up in the streets. The entire population has locked itself in underground tunnels, but decades later it's not known of the entire population survived District 13-style or if infection got to them as well turning them all in zombies. The outside world decides that they're better off not knowing their fate.
• Wuthering Heights: There are two mysterious and unanswered gaps in Heathcliff's life: The first from birth to the time he arrived at Wuthering Heights. The second, three years in his late teens to early adulthood, when he left and made his fortune somehow.
  Nelly: I know all about it: except where he was born, and who were his parents, and how he got his money at first.
  • Where exactly did Heathcliff come from before Mr. Earnshaw brought him to Wuthering Heights at age six? What's his actual birthdate? What was his ethnicity? When he first arrives he is unable to tell anyone who might ask due to a language barrier, but even after he learns English he never discloses that information to anyone (or at least no one Nelly ever talks to). And even if he is Mr. Earnshaw's bastard son (see Bastard Bastard) that still leaves a lot of other questions about his background unanswered.
  • Healthcliff leaves Wuthering Heights for three years, and returns wealthy and ready to get revenge. What did he do in the interim time? The only hint we get is "His upright carriage suggested the idea of his having been in the army."
    Lockwood: Did he finish his education on the Continent, and come back a gentleman? or did he get a sizar's place at college, or escape to America, and earn honours by drawing blood from his foster-country? or make a fortune more promptly on the English highways?
    Nelly: He may have done a little in all these vocations, Mr. Lockwood; but I couldn't give my word for any. I stated before that I didn't know how he gained his money; neither am I aware of the means he took to raise his mind from the savage ignorance into which it was sunk.

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