paul fry makes a distinction between conjectural knowledge and prudential knowledge in oedipus. i think - mine's all - conjectural. a thesis should have a thesis and not simply - be an exploratory speculative essay, although the nature of the subject perhaps means that no conclusion, no solution, ought to be found - not that i mean wittgenstein and the riddle not existing or even this poe quote i found in poe's the gold bug “"it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. in fact, having once established connected and legible characters, i scarcely gave a thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import.” - but that - maybe the enigmatic nature of the subject will lead - not to a sort of unravelling, but a reentanglement in the answer. to ravel means also to unravel, afterall.

if i have a thesis, or the one that nohrnberg can detect from my cluttered thoughts, is that riddles are unsolvable without the predisclosure or preimplantation of clues, so that nothing can be unlocked without the key, but nothing can be keyed without the whole lock. which brings us back to interpretation and the hermeneutic circle, i suppose.