These short riddles are quick, but they’ll still make your brain do a double take!
Who doesn’t love the satisfaction that comes with solving a good riddle? As you work through plays on words, confusing hypothetical situations and hidden-in-plain-sight solutions, you get a mental workout capped off with a nice aha moment. But while we all love the excitement long riddles bring, sometimes we want a concise one-liner for a quick mental exercise. And that’s exactly where short riddles come in.
Want to test your skills with a good riddle (or 10) but don’t want to be racking your brain all day? This collection of short riddles is like simple puzzles that provide lots of mental food to test your deduction skills. They vary in difficulty—from easy riddles suitable for kids to hard riddles made for adults—and include a few funny ones too. But because they’re bite-sized, they won’t overwhelm you.
Read on for some quick riddles for adults and kids. And don’t worry if you get stuck; the answers to every riddle are included below.
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Easy short riddles
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Two people were playing chess. They both won. How is this possible? They were playing two different games against different opponents.
Mississippi has four S‘s and four I‘s. Can you spell that without using S or I? T-H-A-T!
There’s a one-story house where everything is yellow. The walls are yellow. The doors are yellow. All the furniture is yellow. The house has yellow beds and yellow couches. What color are the stairs? There are no stairs—it’s a one-story house!
A girl fell off a 20-foot ladder. She wasn’t hurt. How? She fell off the bottom step.
Grandpa went out for a walk, and it started to rain. He didn’t bring an umbrella or a hat. His clothes got soaked, but not a hair on his head was wet. How is this possible? Grandpa’s bald.
In a race, you pass the person in second place. What place are you in now? Second place.
What four-letter word can be written forward, backward and upside down, and is still readable from left to right? NOON.
What is at the end of the rainbow? The letter W!
Name three consecutive days without naming any of the seven days of the week. Yesterday, today and tomorrow.
You are in a dark room with a box of matches. On a table are a candle, an oil lamp and a log of firewood. What do you light first? The match! Can’t light any of those things without a lit match.
What word is always spelled wrong? “Wrong.” Well, if you want to get technical, it’s not spelled W-R-O-N-G … if you spell it wrong! So then, is it still spelled wrong? Phew! Short riddles can still make you think a whole lot.
Which letter of the alphabet has the most water? The C.
What invention lets you look right through a wall? A window.
Where does today come before yesterday? In the dictionary.
Three doctors all say Robert is their brother. Robert says he has no brothers. Who is lying? No one—the doctors are Robert’s sisters.
What kind of ship has two mates but no captain? A relationship.
A man is holding exactly $5.25 but has only one coin. How is this possible? He has a quarter and a $5 bill.
I called my dog from the opposite side of the river. The dog crossed the river without getting wet, and without using a bridge, a boat or a raft. How is that possible? The river was frozen.
What two words, added together, contain the most letters? Post office.
Hard short riddles
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Bella is outside a shop. She can’t read the signs, but she knows she needs to go in to make a purchase. What store is she at? An eyeglass store.
Wednesday, Bill and Jim went to a restaurant. They ordered and ate their food. Then they paid the bill, but neither Bill nor Jim paid. Who did? Wednesday did!
What are the next three letters in this sequence: O, T, T, F, F, S, S—what comes next? E, N, T. The letters are the first letters of the written numbers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. “Eight, nine, ten” are next.
How can you physically stand behind your father while he is standing behind you? You and your father are standing back-to-back.
What type of cheese is made backward? Edam.
A girl throws a ball as hard as she can. It comes back to her, even though nothing and nobody touches it. How? She throws it straight up in the air!
An electric train is headed east. In which direction does the smoke drift? Electric trains don’t produce any smoke!
What is the one thing everyone can agree is between heaven and earth? The word and.
When is L greater than XL? When you’re using Roman numerals.
How can the number four be half of five? IV, the Roman numeral for four, is half (the middle two letters) of the word five.
A man was driving his truck. His lights weren’t on. The moon was not out. There were no streetlights. Up ahead, a woman was crossing the street. Luckily, the truck driver stopped in time—how did he see her? It was daytime!
A horse attached to a 24-foot chain wants an apple that is 26 feet away. He reaches the apple and munches on it without a problem. How is that possible? The other end of the chain isn’t attached to anything.
Funny short riddles
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A monkey, a squirrel and a bird are racing to the top of a coconut tree. Who will get the banana first? None of them—coconut trees don’t produce bananas!
What has a bottom at the top? Your legs.
If you drop a yellow hat in the Red Sea, what does it become? Wet.
What color is the wind? Blew.
What tastes better than it smells? Your tongue.
What can jump higher than a building? Anything that can jump—buildings can’t jump!
Which word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it? Short.
What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck.
I can be cracked. I can be made. I can be told. I can be played. What am I? A joke.
Short “what am I?” riddles
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You can hold me in your left hand but not your right. What am I? Your right elbow (or right hand)!
I go around all the places, cities, towns and villages, but never come inside. What am I? A street.
You go at red and stop at green. What am I? A watermelon.
I have married many times but have always been single. Who am I? A priest.
I am higher without a head. What am I? A pillow.
I have 13 hearts but no lungs or stomach. What am I? A deck of cards.
I am easy to lift but hard to throw. What am I? A feather. (A piece of paper or a leaf would certainly qualify too!)
I break but never fall. And I fall but never break. What are we? Day and night.
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Reader’s Digest has been telling jokes for more than 100 years, curated and reviewed over the last 20 years by Senior Features Editor Andy Simmons, a humor editor formerly of National Lampoon and the author of Now That’s Funny. We’ve earned prestigious ASME awards for our humor—including comical quips, pranks, puns, cartoons, one-liners, knock-knock jokes, riddles, memes, tweets and stories in laugh-out-loud magazine columns such as “Life in These United States,” “All in a Day’s Work,” “Laughter, the Best Medicine” and “Humor in Uniform,” as well as online collections such as short jokes, dad jokes and bad jokes so bad, they’re great. You can find a century of humor in our 2022 compendium, Reader’s Digest: Laughter, the Best Medicine. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
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