Splits above to grasp the sky. Splits below to grasp the stones. Taken down by its own bones. For book and building it must die.
— submitted by Wavylines
Think you have it? The answer is below.
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Answer: A tree (branches grasp the sky, roots the stones, felled by wooden axe-handles — its own bones)
The trick here is that symmetry does the misdirecting — branches and roots mirror each other as two kinds of splitting, one reaching up, one reaching down, so your mind starts hunting for something with a literal split personality before it ever settles on a tree. Then comes the sting in "taken down by its own bones," which plays on the old axe-handle-from-wood irony: the very material grown to build the tree becomes the tool that fells it, a betrayal disguised as biology. And the closer, "for book and building it must die," quietly reveals purpose after the fact — paper and lumber — so the riddle only makes full sense in hindsight. You end up admiring something that shelters birds, anchors soil, and still gets turned into the very instruments of its own destruction, which is what makes the answer land with a little wistful click.
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