TORONTO -- One Toronto yard has become a puzzling display during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That’s because, for nearly 200 days, Kim Worobec has been providing her neighbours with a “Riddle of the Day.”
“When we started to lockdown, I heard on the radio about someone who was putting out riddles,” Worobec tells CTV News Toronto. “And, I thought, I could do riddles.”
So, every morning, Worobec picks a riddle, writes it out, draws a picture and displays it on her front lawn and on the back of the sign is the answer.
“What do you call witches who live together?” one riddle asks. “Broom-mates,” reads the answer.
Worobec says the riddles have been great conversation starters among people in the neighbourhood.
“I met so many people,” she says. “They would say, ‘love your riddles, we have to make it part of our walk.’ And I thought that I was helping people feel a little bit better.”
“If you’re having a bad day, or like, when you’re thinking about COVID, you can come and look at the riddle and it gives you a laugh,” says young neighbour Aria Mileton. “Which, I think, is very important.”
Aria and her brother, Jesse Mileton, not only visit Worobec’s house to try and solve the riddles, but they have contributed a few of their own.
“Every few days I would find a joke, and then I would put it in Kim’s mail slot and the next day it would appear,” Aria explains. “I felt like I was a part of this whole thing.”
Jesse said he prefers to contribute art to the display.
“When other people go on walks they like seeing how nice other people’s artwork is,” he tells CTV News Toronto.
Worobec enjoyed the contributions from young residents of the nighbourhood so much that she decided to hang the works of art on a string across her lawn. She also placed the riddles, drawings and paintings in Ziploc bags to make them weatherproof.
Worobec says that the display and “Riddle of the Day” has evolved into a community project.
“They give me the clothes pins sometimes, they give me the Ziploc bags, they give me the art, they give me the riddles. And I don’t mind being the curator,” she laughs.
“Riddle of the Day” has been happening courtesy of Worobec since April. The retired teacher/librarian saw it as way to connect with people when everyone was feeling disconnected.
“I do have a lot of friends that I text the riddles to every day,” she adds. “Some in Prince Edward Island, some in B.C. and up north. So that’s how I keep in touch with all my friends.”
Worobec says she plans to eventually give the riddles to her former school so that other children can enjoy them, too.
Halloween will mark Worobec’s 200th riddle, but she says that doesn’t mean the project will be coming to an end.
“I think I’m going to keep going. It’s my own morning creative drawing,” she says. “Jesse particularly said ‘you’re helping us get through this Kim.’ So I thought okay well we’ll just keep going.”
“It gives me a feeling that I can give them a smile,” Worobec adds. “And we all need to smile right now.”
