Got a clever kid? Try one of these riddles for kids. Some are tricky, some are funny and all will get their brains working!
What is a riddle?
A riddle is a fun type of brain teaser that exists as a question or statement to be solved.
It can be framed in a way that is misleading, baffling, or puzzling, and is typically presented as a problem to be solved or guessed.
Riddles can have a double or veiled meaning, and they can be presented in a way that seems to be nonsense but has a clever or amusing answer. They often involve critical thinking on the reader’s part to figure out the answer.
184+ riddles for kids
I am a three digit number. My second digit is four times bigger than the third digit. My first digit is 3 less than my second digit. What number am I?
Answer: 141
If four people can repair four bicycles in four hours, how many bicycles can eight people repair in eight hours?
Answer: 16 bicycles.
How many letters are there in the English alphabet?
Answer: 18: 3 in ‘the’, 7 in ‘English,’ and 8 in ‘alphabet.’
Mrs. Black has two children. If the oldest child is a girl, what are the odds that the other child is also a girl?
Answer: 50 percent.
Using only addition, how do you add eight 8s and get the number 1,000?
Answer: 888 + 88 + 8 + 8 + 8 = 1000.
I come in many different colors and I get bigger when I’m full. I will float away if you don’t tie me down and I will make a loud sound if I break. What am I?
Answer: A balloon.
It has a neck but no head, and wears a cap? What is it?
Answer: A bottle.
I’m tall when I’m young, and I’m short when I’m old, what am I?
Answer: A candle.
What’s orange and sounds like a parrot?
Answer: A carrot.
What has hands but can’t clap?
Answer: A clock.
What has hands but doesn’t clap?
Answer: A clock.
What never asks questions but is often answered?
Answer: A doorbell.
This goes up and down, but never moves? What is it?
Answer: A flight of stairs.
What has a thumb and four fingers but is not alive?
Answer: A glove.
I have keys but no doors. I have space but no rooms, I allow you to enter but you are never able to leave. What am I?
Answer: A keyboard.
I have wings and I have a tail, across the sky is where I sail. Yet I have no eyes, ears or mouth, and I bob randomly from north to south. What am I?
Answer: A kite.
What can be big, white, dirty and wicked?
Answer: A lie.
Where can you find cities, towns, shops, and streets but no people?
Answer: A map.
I give milk and I have a horn, but I’m not a cow. What am I?
Answer: A milk truck.
What kind of tree can you carry in your hand?
Answer: A palm.
You will buy me to eat but never eat me. What am I?
Answer: A plate.
I am round or oval. I can be light or dark. You can cut me in pieces. What am I?
Answer: A potato.
What do you call a parade of rabbits hopping backward?
Answer: A receding hare-line.
What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a head but never weeps, has a bed but never sleeps?
Answer: A river.
What is full of holes but still holds water?
Answer: A sponge.
What travels around the world but stays in one spot?
Answer: A stamp.
What has four legs but can’t walk?
Answer: A table.
What starts with the letter T, is filled with T and ends in T?
Answer: A teapot.
What begins with T, finishes with T, and has T in it?
Answer: A teapot.
You can you serve it, but never eat it? What is it?
Answer: A tennis ball.
What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?
Answer: A towel.
What invention lets you look right through a wall?
Answer: A window.
How many months have 28 days?
Answer: All 12 months.
After a train crashed, every single person died. Who survived?
Answer: All of the couples.
You walk across a bridge and you see a boat full of people, yet there isn’t a single person on board. How is that possible?
Answer: All the people on the boat are married.
What do you call fake spaghetti?
Answer: An “impasta.”
What do you call a group of musical whales?
Answer: An “orca-stra.”
What has to be broken before you can use it?
Answer: An egg.
What begins with an E but only has one letter?
Answer: An envelope.
What answer can you never answer yes to?
Answer: Are you asleep yet?
Why did the scarecrow win an award?
Answer: Because he was outstanding in his field.
Why do seagulls fly over the sea?
Answer: Because if they flew over the bay they’d be Bagels.
Why was the math book sad?
Answer: Because it had too many problems.
How is Europe like a frying pan?
Answer: Because it has Greece at the bottom.
Why did the bicycle fall over?
Answer: Because it was two-tired.
Why can’t you give Elsa from Frozen a balloon?
Answer: Because she will let it go.
Why don’t some couples go to the gym?
Answer: Because some relationships don’t work out.
Why don’t seagulls fly over the bay?
Answer: Because then they’d be bagels.
Why don’t oysters donate to charity?
Answer: Because they are shellfish.
Why don’t scientists trust molecules?
Answer: Because they can’t be split.
Why do bees hum?
Answer: Because they don’t know the words.
Why don’t scientists trust atoms?
Answer: Because they make up everything!
Why don’t scientists trust stairs?
Answer: Because they’re always up to something.
Why are ghosts bad liars?
Answer: Because you can see right through them.
Beth’s mother has three daughters. One is called Laura, the other one is Sarah. What is the name of the third daughter?
Answer: Beth.
What kind of money do vampires use?
Answer: Bloodmoney.
Turn us on our backs and open up our stomachs, and you will be the wisest but at the start a lummox. What are we?
Answer: Books.
How can a leopard change its spots?
Answer: By moving from one spot to another.
What did the baseball glove say to the ball?
Answer: Catch you later.
What can you catch but not throw?
Answer: Cold.
You bought me for dinner but never eat me. What am I?
Answer: Cutlery.
David’s parents have three sons: Snap, Crackle and…?
Answer: David!
A word I know, six letters it contains, remove one letter and 12 remains, what is it?
Answer: Dozens.
You draw a line. Without touching it, how do you make it a longer line?
Answer: Draw a short line next to it and now it’s the longer line.
What type of cheese is made backwards?
Answer: Edam.
If twos’ company and three’s a crowd, what are five and six?
Answer: Eleven.
What time did the tooth fairy show up to get a kid’s tooth and leave a dollar under the pillow?
Answer: Exactly TWOoth o’ clock.
You have a five-gallon bucket and a three-gallon bucket with as much water as you need, but no other measuring devices. How do you fill the five-gallon bucket with exactly four gallons of water?
Answer: Fill the five-gallon bucket all the way up. Pour it into the three-gallon bucket until it is full. Empty the three-gallon bucket. Pour the remaining two gallons into the three-gallon bucket. Fill the five-gallon bucket all the way up, then finish filling the three-gallon bucket, leaving four gallons in the five-gallon bucket.
Mary has four daughters, and each of her daughters has a brother — how many children does Mary have?
Answer: Five, each daughter has the same brother.
The more you take, the more you leave behind. What are they?
Answer: Footprints.
What do you get when you cross a snowman and a vampire?
Answer: Frostbite.
If a red house is made of red bricks, and a yellow house is made of yellow bricks, what is a greenhouse made of?
Answer: Glass, all greenhouses are made of glass.
A truck driver is going opposite traffic on a one-way street. A police officer sees him but doesn’t stop him. Why didn’t the police officer stop him?
Answer: He is walking.
Did you hear about the claustrophobic astronaut?
Answer: He just needed a little space.
Did you hear about the guy who invented Lifesavers?
Answer: He made a mint.
Why did Mickey Mouse go to Outer Space?
Answer: He wanted to visit Pluto.
Did you hear about the mathematician who’s afraid of negative numbers?
Answer: He’ll stop at nothing to avoid them.
What is as light as a feather, but even the world’s strongest man couldn’t hold it for more than a minute?
Answer: His breath.
What did one wall say to the other wall?
Answer: I’ll meet you at the corner.
I scream, you scream, we all scream. For what?
Answer: Ice cream!
If there are three apples and you take away two, how many do you have?
Answer: If you take two apples, then, of course, you have two.
How does a penguin build its house?
Answer: Igloos it together!
If a brother, his sister, and their dog weren’t under an umbrella, why didn’t they get wet?
Answer: It wasn’t raining.
Parallel lines have so much in common.
Answer: It’s a shame they’ll never meet.
What do you call it when your parachute doesn’t open?
Answer: Jumping to a conclusion.
I have a large money box, 10 inches wide and 5 inches tall. Roughly how many coins can I place in my empty money box?
Answer: Just one, after which it will no longer be empty.
What do you call a fish that wears a crown?
Answer: King fish.
What did the beach say when the tide came in?
Answer: Long time, no sea.
What two things can you never eat for breakfast?
Answer: Lunch and dinner!
Adored by few, feared and hated by many. Mistress of the entire universal reason, master in the art of numbers. Some may have solved many of your mysteries, but there still much of them to find. What are they?
Answer: Mathematics.
What has four eyes but can’t see?
Answer: Mississippi.
Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks?
Answer: Neither. They both weigh one pound.
If two’s company, and three’s a crowd, what are four and five?
Answer: Nine!
How far can a fox run into the woods?
Answer: Only halfway, otherwise it would be running out of the woods!
What starts with a P, ends with an E and has thousands of letters?
Answer: Post office.
How do you tell the gender of an ant?
Answer: Put it in water. If it sinks, girl ant. If it floats, buoyant.
What word has five letters but sounds like it only has one?
Answer: Queue.
Say Racecar backwards.
Answer: Racecar backwards.
I am an odd number. Take away one letter and I become even. What number am I?
Answer: Seven (take away the “s’”and it becomes “even”).
Tara has $30.00 dollars. She bought 5 coloring books that cost $3.00 each, 4 boxes of Crayola crayons that cost $2.00 each. She spends the rest of her money on markers. How much money did she spend on markers?
Answer: She spent $7 on markers.
What five-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?
Answer: Shorter. (Short + ‘er’)
What is so delicate that saying its name breaks it?
Answer: Silence.
What is so fragile that saying its name breaks it?
Answer: Silence.
What do you call a fairy that hasn’t taken a bath?
Answer: Stinker Bell.
Imagine you’re in a room that is filling with water. There are no windows or doors. How do you get out?
Answer: Stop imagining!
What goes around and around the wood, but never goes into the wood?
Answer: The bark on a tree.
Which letter of the alphabet has the most water?
Answer: The C.
Where does success come before work?
Answer: The dictionary.
What is always in front of you but can’t be seen?
Answer: The future.
What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?
Answer: The letter M.
Mr. Blue lives in the blue house, Mr. Yellow lives in the yellow house, and Mr. Black lives in the black house. Who lives in the white house?
Answer: The President.
What do the numbers 11, 69, and 88 all have in common?
Answer: The read the same right side up and upside down.
They come out at night without being called and are lost in the day without being stolen. What are they?
Answer: The stars.
What goes up and down but never moves?
Answer: The temperature.
A girl is sitting in a house at night that has no lights on at all. There is no lamp, no candle, nothing. Yet she is reading. How?
Answer: The woman is blind, and she is reading Braille.
If an electric train is going east at 60 miles an hour and there is a strong westerly wind, which way does the smoke from the train drift?
Answer: There is no smoke coming from electric trains.
Did you hear about the cheese factory explosion?
Answer: There was nothing left but de-brie.
In a one-story pink house, there was a pink person, a pink cat, a pink fish, a pink computer, a pink chair, a pink table, a pink telephone, a pink shower – everything was pink! What color were the stairs?
Answer: There weren’t any stairs, it was a one-story house.
Why don’t skeletons fight each other?
Answer: They don’t have the guts.
How do oceans say hello to each other?
Answer: They wave!
Two mothers and two daughters went out to eat. Everyone ate one burger, yet only three burgers were eaten in all. How is this possible?
Answer: They were a grandmother, mother, and daughter.
Did you hear about the kidnapping at the playground?
Answer: They woke up.
How can you throw a ball as hard as you can, to only have it come back to you, even if it doesn’t bounce off anything?
Answer: Throw the ball straight up in the air.
What’s the best time to go to the dentist?
Answer: Tooth-hurty.
What is easy to get into but hard to get out of?
Answer: Trouble.
What superhero is terrible at their job because they always get lost and are late?
Answer: Wander Woman.
If you throw a blue stone into the Red Sea, what will it become?
Answer: Wet.
What word is spelled wrong in every dictionary?
Answer: Wrong.
Is an older one-hundred dollar bill worth more than a newer one?
Answer: Yes. A $100 bill is worth more than a $1 bill (newer one).
How do you organize a space party?
Answer: You “planet”!
You draw a line. Without touching it, how do you make the line longer?
Answer: You draw a shorter line next to it, and it becomes the longer line.
What goes up but never goes back down?
Answer: Your age.
When things go wrong, what can you always count on?
Answer: Your fingers.
What belongs to you but other people use it more than you?
Answer: Your name.
If you multiply me by any other number, the answer will always remain the same. What number am I?
Answer: Zero.
How many months of the year have 28 days?
Answer: All of them! Every month has at least 28 days.
What has hands and a face, but can’t hold anything or smile?
Answer: A clock.