Abstract This paper is part of a series around the theme — wavelets: a key to intennittent information?. The title itself raises a fundamental question; we shall argue that the answer is both no and yes. We say no because wavelets per se only address a portion of the intermittency challenge; we intend to make clear how much larger the question is than just the portion which wavelets can face effectively. Roughly speaking, wavelets deal efficiently only with one type of intermittency — singularities at points — and in higher dimensions there are many other kinds of intermittency — singularities along lines, along hyperplanes, etc. — which wavelets do not deal with efficiently. But we also say yes, because by using wavelets in a novel way, we have been able to build new systems of representations — ridgelets — which are efficient at many of the tasks where wavelets fail.