... Who's more devious? A dragon or a self-appointed Princess of Aptos?
This is a bit of backstory that's too obscure to cram into the comic at its current pacing, but Sharon's interest in riddles has a definitive source.
In Stephen King's Wizard and Glass (book 4 of the Dark Tower series), the story begins with our band of heroes matching wits with a psychotic monorail train (really!) in a riddle contest. The train, named Blaine the Mono, seems to be an invincible master of riddles... that is, until one of the heroes discovers his unlikely (and awesome) weak point.
Sharon's take on that scene is that Blaine is not so much a riddle master as a giant library of riddles, and that "his" success through most of the contest is based on the fact that he has a nearly comprehensive database of riddles from multiple worlds. The heroes in the novel try to stump Blaine solely with old riddles (from memory or from a book in their possession).
Sharon formed the opinion that completely original riddles not found in the mono's database would have probably defeated Blaine.
As such, Sharon began to study riddles, and come up with original brain teasers to share with some of her close friends. In the spirit of keeping these riddles "safe from Blaine," they never recorded these riddles in any electronic format, and shared them aloud in the manner of the Gilead Fair Day contest described in the book.
(Aaron Curmen was quite good at this game. Gail was terrible.)
Who knew all that geeky play would come in so handy?
The riddles presented thus far were not calculated to exploit the particular weakness Blaine the Mono fell victim to in the book. But she did develop the knack for coming up with that kind of riddle, too.
Tune in next time as she shares one of her favorites...
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