Stories To Make You Think

Stories To Make You Think
An Internet Hotlist on Thought-Provoking Stories

Introduction
In addition to using books and magazines to find out about thought-provoking stories, why not also use the power of the Internet? The links below will get you started.

The Internet Resources

Riddles and Riddle Stories

'A Pottle of Brains' - An English folktale about a foolish man who wants some brains.
'Riddle Me, Riddle Me, What is That?' - Overview of the structure of true riddles, problems and conundrums.
'The Cow Tail Switch' - A traditional dilemma tale from West Africa.
'The Riddle and the Poem' - Excerpts from the book 'The Riddle and the Poem' by Divile Gimbutas
'Untying the Knot' - Eighteen essays on riddles.
Book Review - Riddles: Perspectives on the use, function and change in a folklore genre - Interesting review of what looks like an interesting, scholarly book on riddles from a Finnish researcher.
Forty Traditional Riddles - True riddles, complete with solutions
Riddles by Abrams and Dundes - Article from Folklore
The Tolkien Trail - Traditional riddles, including those from The Hobbit
Whootie Owl's 'Stories to Grow By' - Includes four riddle stories: 'Outwitting the Imp' (Congo), 'The Pumpkin in the Jar' (Phillipines), 'Ali Coglia and the Merchant of Bagdad' (Iraq), and 'The Young Head of the Family' (China)

Palindromes, Spoonerism and Word Play

Fun-with-words.com - A great site, with spoonerisms, palindromes, pangrams, oxymora, and other word play.
Goonerisms Spalore! - Oodles of spoonerisms--'tairy fales,' 'true' stories and more.
The Archive of Endangered, Special or Fun Words - Lots to explore. Twitterpated?
Tom Swifties - 'I refuse to make an agenda,' Tom said listlessly. More word play of this sort. Part of many word play pages on thinks.com

Math Stories

'The Father's Will' - A variation on the classic math story about dividing camels among three brothers.
'The Missing Dollar' --- A Classic Math Story - Three men, one hotel room, a dishonest bellboy, and a missing dollar. . . .
'Two Ways to Count to Ten' - Video and transcription of a traditional African counting tale.

Logic Problems, Justice Issues and Puzzlers

'Young Head of the Family' - Chinese story about fire and wind wrapped in paper
Unending Story - Two Versions - Two endless stories from a couple of storytellers. One is the familiar 'It was a dark and stormy night. . . .' The other is Chinese.

Content by Marilyn McPhie, mcphie@cts.com
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listthoughtma.html
Last revised Mon Jun 13 21:33:38 US/Pacific 2011