ohhhhhhhhhhhhh! how can i not love professor nohrnberg!

To add to your stock of examples, and to re-relate "quest" to "riddle," -- or to create the composite "hermeneutical quest," -- I think the "knock-knock joke" is helpful. The knocker poses a riddle of the "Who am I?" kind: in return for the knock asking for admission, the person answering the door (and note this way of putting it) asks the riddler for the riddler's identification (but also asks, inadvertantly, for the knocker to pose him a riddle), then the riddler delays identifying himself even while providing an installment or clue or a kind of riddle (the riddle or question being how to supplement or complete the identification so it makes sense for the knocker to be at the door in a relation to the person inside it), and then the riddler supplies the answer in a way that precipitates recognition of (and demonstrates conclusively) the relevance of what s/he previously provided. At the same time, the riddled party is left with the feeling that s/he has been "had," or tricked into accepting something that proved to be something else, when its true nature was manifested and revealed by the supplement Then the first part of the riddle seems less unintelligible than arbitrary (or a handle that turned out to have something untoward attached).