Young Writers Society

Hi Eros, DrFeelGood here to review your poem/riddle.

I have to be honest here, this poem was pretty confusing on the first read. It's one thing to have a deliciously complicated riddle, and another to have a confusing puzzle. After reading your poem twice, I had no clue what was happening. This poem at first, failed to engage me.

But then, after reading your poem, I read your answer. Now everything makes a lot of sense! Being a chess fan myself, the horses and elephants thing had me wondering if the monarchy you're talking about is the game of chess. But then, I call them bishop and rook in the game so I wasn't sure.

So after reading all the three answers, what I am going to do is, show you what worked well for me and what needs more improvement.


What is spot on:

1. Your very first riddle. While reading it for the first time, I thought it was unengaging and confusing, but after reading the answer, I got the feeling, 'Oh, I could have cracked that!' The, 'Oh, I could have' feeling is extremely important for a poem that aspires to pose a question to its readers. That's the first thing to making a good riddle. You're on a great track here.

2. You have set a puzzle that 'can' be solved. In my opinion, this is single-handedly the most important achievement of your poem. This riddle is neither random nor bizarre. It's firmly grounded and you're clear in your head space as to what exactly you want this poem to do. Your clear-headedness is again pretty effective in building this poem.

What needs to be improved:

1. Your structure:

- It is hard to follow your poem because it seems disconnected and disjoint at first sight. Like I already said, your riddle made sense after reading the answer but previously it was really confusing. It is hard to decipher what is happening throughout the poem till you actually see the answers.

* How can you improve it?
- By writing smoother transitions. The hardest part about a mystery is to pretend you
don't know the answer when you know it. And that's what you need to do over here.
You need to pretend you have no idea of the answer and look at your poem from
that point of view. When you see this poem through the eyes of the reader, not as a
poet, you'll realize where these transitions are missing and why it was confusing at
first place.


2. Your last two riddles are pretty confusing.

- The problem with your riddle is that if the user fails to decipher the first answer, he has no clue about the second and third one. You have built this as a sort of continuation of the riddle but it doesn't work that way because once I was able to figure out the first riddle, the answers to the next two riddles weren't very hard to guess. Either you should go for stand alone puzzle or brainstorm trickier questions.


Overall, you have done the hard part right. You have created an interesting setup and an engaging poem. It needs more full-proofing and fine-tuning to build more interesting riddle. I love your ambition. I hope you manage to create even more challenging puzzle next time around! Thanks. Keep writing!

The answers are:
So, the time ends up and the answers are:

Ans-1: The monarchy rule is in the democratic country. There is a war between two intelligent fellows playing chess in a democratic country. The monarchy is in the chess and the democracy is in the main country.

Ans-2: In the second stanza the wars of the chess and the war fough on the borders of the democratic countries are compared. Two wars---one in the chess and the other on the border of te country are occuring simultaneously. There is no weapon, friendliness spread, silence, no huge money lost, and nobody dies in the chess. Whereas there is noice of guns, lakhs af mone lost and many are dead in the war fought by the soldiers on the border of the democratic country.

Ans-3: The battle in the chess is good and harmless. So, the monarchy is always happy. But the war which is fought by the democratic country is bad as it involves harm to the innocents. So, the democracy is in a sad mood.

Hi Eros! So I may be completely wrong, but I felt like answer since nobody has yet that I've noticed.

Q.1 A monarchy can be in a democratic country if the democracy is made up my monarchies. For example if Trump (ugh) were to become the front runner for the Republicans, he would in a sense be the head of all of them which would make that a monarchy.

Q.2 I din't really understand this one so I'll move on to question 3

Q.3 First I didn't completely understand how the question was formatted, but I'll give my thoughts. Well this goes back to my answer to number 1 since monarchy is also democracy in a sense at least when you are looking at in that way which would to see that monarchy/democracy wins than they'll be happy, but if they lose than they'll be sad.

Thanks for the riddles got me through my day
~g1ldv

Hey Eros! Arzoo's here for your review today!

TITLE:
The title was quite captivating. I think that was the reason I ended up here.

CONCEPT:
The concept based on politics is praiseworthy. Firstly, because not many write about it. Secondly, you managed it well.

RHYMING & CAPITALIZATION SCHEME:
I notice that you have rhymed the ending stanzas and not the first one. May I know why so? Rhyme makes it better though there's no issue with it being in free verse as well:)

CRITICISM:
The grammar in general and the flow overall is fine. I guess you were a bit excited about publishing the work and didn't recheck it properly.
Here's the mistake: "yet polluted by *noice* of gun shots and moans;"
Please correct it as noise.

The second stanza was a bit confusing. So please let the cat out of the bag and let us know about the answers to your questions. The best part of the poem was the ending considering it from its rhyming sense, and also it is quite meaningful.

You write good, keep writing and I wish you good luck:)

What an original poem you have here, i will only review on that i can't do grammar. Okay , first great detail it suits with each other so well. I like how you write it suits your poem so well . it's so unique and actually rhymes perfectly well not too much either. That all i have to say.