Ambedkar did not get to publish in his lifetime. As I began
the process of selecting and annotating Riddles, the book itself posed a major riddle. While the first and second editions of an iconic work like Annihilation of Caste (1936, 1944) that Ambedkar oversaw to the last detail could be traced, we had no choice but to base our edition of Riddles on the version that appears in Vol. 4 of the ongoing multi-volume series called 'Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches', known by the acronym BAWS, produced by the Maharashtra government's education department. The BAWS editors say at the outset: "We, however, regret that the final manuscript of this volume has not been found."