Tricky Riddles with Answers

A promise.

You hunt for a physical object that shatters, but a promise breaks with words and needs no touch at all.

Nine. All but nine means nine survived.

You assume the survivor count needs subtracting, but 'all but nine died' already says nine are the ones left alive.

Ten minutes. All three eggs cook at the same time.

You multiply ten by three, but all three eggs boil together in the same pot at once.

Nowhere. You do not bury survivors.

You debate which country's ground to use, but survivors are alive and nobody buries them.

Neither. Roosters do not lay eggs.

You debate which way the egg rolls, but roosters are male and lay no egg to begin with.

An address.

You picture a wearable garment, but the answer is an address, a location that only sounds like 'a dress'.

There is no smoke. Electric trains do not produce any.

You track the wind against the train's motion, but an electric train makes no smoke to blow anywhere.

Because he is still living. You cannot bury a living man.

You hunt for a legal or geographic reason he cannot cross states, but the word living means he is alive, so no burial applies.

Just one. The last brick completes it.

You try to count every brick in the wall, but only the final brick actually completes the building.

Your lap.

You expect a shadow or object, but a lap only exists while you sit and vanishes when you stand.

The word incorrectly.

You hunt for a rare misspelled entry, but the answer is the literal word incorrectly, always spelled i-n-c-o-r-r-e-c-t-l-y.

T-H-A-T. The word that has no R in it.

The railroad line floods your ears with Rs, but you only need to spell the small word that, which has none.

A palm.

You think of a whole outdoor tree too big to hold, but palm is both a tree and the inside of your hand.

The library. Every shelf is full of them.

You read stories as floors and picture a skyscraper, but a library holds the most stories as in tales on its shelves.

A coat of paint.

You think of a garment you would never wear soaking wet, but a coat of paint goes on wet by design.

It is not raining.

You assume the one small umbrella cannot shield ten kids, but nobody gets wet because it is not raining at all.

Your age.

You hunt for a physical thing that rises, but your age only ever climbs and never falls.

Add the letter G in front of it and it is gone.

You hunt for a math operation on the value one, but the trick is spelling, since G in front of ONE makes GONE.

Second place. You took the spot of the person you passed, not the leader's.

You feel like passing someone moves you up toward first, but you take the passed runner's second-place spot, not the leader's.

A window.

You picture a high-tech see-through device, but a plain window already lets you look straight through a wall.

A cupcake.

You read cup as a drinking vessel, but a cupcake is the kind of cup that holds no water.

The surgeon is his mother.

You assume a surgeon must be a man, but the surgeon is the boy's mother.

None. It was Noah who built the ark, not Moses.

You accept the name Moses and start counting, but Noah built the ark, so Moses took none.

The match. Nothing else can be lit before it.

You rush to choose among the candle, lamp, and fireplace, but you must strike the match first before any of them can be lit.

Neither. Yolks are yellow.

You debate is versus are as a grammar puzzle, but both fail because a yolk is yellow, not white.

It was daytime. Nothing in the story said it was night for the driver, only that the man wore black.

You pile the black clothes and unlit headlights into a picture of pitch dark, but nothing blinds the driver because it is broad daylight.

A tennis ball.

You read serve as dishing up food, but serve is also the opening hit in tennis, and you never eat the ball.

The outside.

You weigh left against right, but a cat's fur is all on the outside, not the inside.

It does not matter. If his wife is a widow, the man is dead.

You weigh marriage law, but the word widow means his wife outlived him, so the man is already dead and cannot marry.

Five. Deciding to jump is not the same as jumping.

You subtract the one that jumps, but it only decides to jump, and deciding is not doing, so all five stay put.

He is bald.

You look for shelter or a trick against the rain, but he simply has no hair on his head to get wet.

An umbrella.

You look for something that naturally rises when rain falls, but the answer is the umbrella people raise to stay dry.

Eat the dates from the calendar, drink from the springs of the bed, and use the keys of the piano to unlock the door.

Each object hides a second meaning: a calendar has dates, a bed has springs, and a piano has keys.

They were not playing against each other. Each won three games against other people.

You assume the two friends played each other, but each won three games against other opponents.

One hour. A wind up clock cannot tell morning from evening, so it rings at nine that same night.

You picture waking at 9 a.m. for 13 hours of sleep, but a wind-up clock rings at 9 that same night, one hour later.

He sleeps at night. The riddle only mentioned days.

You imagine eight sleepless 24-hour spans, but 'days' means daytime and he still sleeps each night.

The parrot is deaf. It repeats every word it hears, and it hears nothing.

You assume 'repeats every word it hears' guarantees the bird will talk, but the parrot is deaf and hears nothing to repeat.

Read them as amounts, not years. Two thousand nineteen pennies is one penny more than two thousand eighteen pennies.

You read 2019 and 2018 as years and compare age, but they are counts of coins, so 2019 pennies is one cent more.

They are two of a set of triplets.

You assume two same-day siblings must be a pair of twins, but they are two of a set of triplets.

Are you asleep yet? If you answer, the answer is no.

You hunt for a paradox, but answering "Are you asleep yet" at all proves you are awake, so yes can never be honest.

She shot a photo of him and developed the film in a darkroom tray.

You picture a real gun and drowning, but shoots means takes a photo and underwater means the developing tray.

The plane was parked on the runway the whole time.

You assume the plane is in flight, but it is parked on the runway so he just hops down.

The river is frozen. The dog trots straight across the ice.

You picture liquid water and search for a swimming or leaping trick, but the river is frozen so the dog walks across the ice.

A yardstick.

You picture a creature with real feet, but foot means the length unit: a three-foot yardstick has one at each end and one in the middle.

A penny. Heads on one side, tails on the other.

Head, tail, brown, and no legs steer you toward an animal, but they describe the two sides of a penny.

Your feet, off the floor.

You read take off as removing clothing, but the last thing you take off the floor is your feet as you climb in.

One. Pile them together and you get a single big haystack.

You add one plus two and expect three, but piling haystacks together merges them into a single big one.

A monkey, a donkey, and a turkey.

You look for literal keys, but the answer is animals whose names end in key and open nothing.

Your legs. The bottom sits at the top of them.

You picture an object whose base sits up high, but bottom also means your rear, which rests at the top of your legs.

House numbers. The price depends on how many digits you need.

You assume the price scales with quantity of items, but you are buying digits, so 1, 12, and 144 need one, two, and three digits.

He is a minister. He performed the weddings, he was not the groom.

You assume he is the groom marrying each woman, but as a minister he marries couples by officiating their weddings.

A quarter and a nickel. One of them, the quarter, is not a nickel. The other one is.

You take one is not a nickel to mean neither coin is a nickel, but only that one specific coin, the quarter, is not the nickel.

Glass. A greenhouse is for growing plants.

You expect the color-plus-bricks pattern to give green bricks, but a greenhouse is a glass structure for growing plants.

Smiles. There is a whole mile between the first and last letter.

You hunt for a long spelled-out word, but smiles wins because there is a mile between its first and last letter.

He is walking, not driving.

The words truck driver and one way street make you picture him at the wheel, but at that moment he is on foot walking.

Every drink was still sealed in its bottle. Nothing had been opened yet.

You picture open glasses that must splash, but the drinks are still sealed in their bottles, so flipping the tray spills nothing.

Because a wooden leg cannot take photos. You need a camera.

You read with a wooden leg as describing the man, but it names the tool, and you take photos with a camera, not a leg.

Let some air out of the tires. The truck sinks a few inches and drives out.

You fixate on the truck and the bridge and think of cutting or lifting, but deflating the tires drops the truck enough to roll out.

A decimal point. 7.5 sits right between them.

You hunt for a digit or math operation to insert, but the answer is a punctuation mark that turns 7 and 8 into 7.5.

None. The boat rises with the tide, and the ladder rises with the boat.

You count a rung per foot of rising water, but the boat floats up with the tide so the water never reaches any new rung.

It can have a hole in it.

You read empty as nothing inside, but a hole counts as something in the pocket while it still holds no contents.

The letter W. Look at the end of the word rainbow.

You hunt for a pot of gold, but 'the end of a rainbow' means the last letter of the written word rainbow, which is W.

Everyone on board is married. There is not a single person among them.

You read single person as one human, but single means unmarried, and everyone aboard is married.

SEE O DOUBLE YOU.

You try to stuff extra letters into the word cow, but you spell each letter name aloud as SEE O DOUBLE YOU.

An envelope.

You expect a word built only from E's, but an envelope starts and ends with E and holds a single letter of mail.

He is playing Monopoly and landed on a hotel he cannot afford.

You picture a real car and a real hotel bill, but he is moving a game token onto a Monopoly property.

Queue. Drop the last four and it still sounds like Q.

You assume removing four letters must change the sound, but queue is pronounced like its first letter Q all by itself.

Ton. Spelled backward it becomes not.

You search for a heavy object, but the word ton reversed spells not, which weighs nothing.

Short. Add e and r to get shorter.

You expect extra letters to make a word longer, but short plus er literally spells shorter.

Seven. Remove the s and you get even.

You hunt for an arithmetic trick, but dropping the S from seven leaves the word even.

Mount Everest. It was already the tallest, just not yet found.

You assume an unknown peak cannot hold the title, but Everest was the tallest all along whether or not anyone had measured it.

White. The house sits on the North Pole, so it is a polar bear.

The only spot where every wall faces south is the North Pole, and the only bears there are white.

A secret.

You hunt for an object you lose by giving, but a secret stops being a secret the instant you tell it.

There are only three people: a grandfather, his son, and his grandson.

You count two plus two as four anglers, but the middle man is both a father and a son, so three people catch three fish.

One hour. You take the first now, the second at thirty minutes, the third at sixty.

You multiply three by thirty and expect ninety minutes, but the first pill is swallowed at minute zero.

Meat. Weighing it is his job.

You expect a figure in pounds, but a butcher weighs meat on his scale all day.

Seventy. Dividing by half means dividing by one half, so 30 becomes 60, plus ten.

You read divide by half as cut in two and guess twenty-five, but dividing 30 by one half gives 60, and ten more is 70.

Five. The four girls all share the same single brother.

You give each daughter her own brother and reach eight, but the sisters share one brother, making five children.

It is impossible. To pass the last runner you would have to be behind them, so they were never last.

You start calculating positions, but you can never pass the very last runner without being behind them yourself.

The word wrong.

You search for a commonly mispronounced term, but the answer is literally wrong, which everyone says as wrong.

The number eight. Sideways it becomes the infinity sign, and cut in half it makes zeros.

You hunt for an object, but a figure eight turned sideways is the infinity symbol, and cutting it in half leaves a pair of zeros, which stand for nothing.

Bookkeeper. It stacks oo, kk, and ee back to back.

You dig for a rare term, but bookkeeper lines up oo, kk, and ee in a row.

His own son.

You tangle the family tree and guess himself, but with no siblings my father's son is the man himself, so the portrait shows his son.

The letter M.

You search for an event in time, but the answer is the letter M, counted where it appears in each written word.

Alphabet. It is the word that names all of them.

You try to recall a pangram, but alphabet is the one word that contains, meaning names, all twenty-six letters.

None. A hole has no dirt in it, which is what makes it a hole.

You start calculating cubic feet, but a hole is empty by definition, so there is no dirt inside it.

A teapot.

You look for a word bracketed by the letter T, but a teapot is filled with tea, which sounds like T.