Sophistry, technically regarded as a form of expression, has all the associations with primitive play as we found them in the sophist’s predecessor, the ‘vates’. The sophism proper is closely related to the riddle. It is a fencer’s trick. The Greek word ‘problema’, in its original concrete sense, means either something you place before yourself as a defence – a shield for instance- or something you throw down at another’s feet for one to take up – a gage. Both meanings taken in the abstract hold good for the art of the sophist.