🤔 August 26, 2026 · by farrudeveloper

15 riddles with answers to think about for a while

Fifteen classic riddles with their solutions at the end, ordered from easy to hard. The old favourites plus a few logic ones that resist more than they look.

Riddles are the oldest puzzle there is and they still work for a simple reason: the solution is almost never about knowing more, it is about stopping reading the wording the way you were reading it.

Here are fifteen, ordered roughly from easy to hard. All the answers are at the end, so you can work through them without spoiling anything. One recommendation: if one resists for more than two minutes, skip to the next and come back. With riddles, incubation genuinely works.

The fifteen

1. I have cities but no houses, forests but no trees, and rivers without a drop of water. What am I?

2. The more you take away from me, the bigger I get. What am I?

3. I have hands but no arms, and a face but no eyes. What am I?

4. It goes up and down without ever moving from where it is. What is it?

5. If you say my name, I cease to exist. What am I?

6. It has teeth but does not bite. What is it?

7. What word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?

8. There is a word in English whose first two letters signify a male, whose first three signify a female, whose first four signify a great man, and whose whole signifies a great woman. What is the word?

9. What common English word contains three consecutive double letters?

10. Before Mount Everest was discovered, which was the highest mountain in the world?

11. You have two coins that add up to 30p, and one of them is not a 20p. Which coins are they?

12. Two fathers and two sons go fishing. Each catches exactly one fish, and between them they catch three. How can that be?

13. A man looks at a photograph and says: «Brothers and sisters I have none, but this man's father is my father's son.» Who is in the photograph?

14. A snail wants to get out of a well 10 metres deep. During the day it climbs 3 metres, and at night, while it sleeps, it slides back 2. How many days does it take to get out?

15. I am the beginning of everything and the end of every place. I am the start of eternity and the end of time and space. What letter am I?

How to attack the ones that resist

Before the answers, three things that work on almost any riddle:

Be suspicious of the word that looks most innocent. In number 11 the entire trap is the word «one». One of them is not a 20p — which says absolutely nothing about the other. Most logic riddles are solved by reading the wording with a lawyer's precision.

Count the people, not the relationships. In number 12 the wording pushes you towards four individuals because it says «two and two». Family riddles almost always work like this: the same person holds two roles at once.

When there are numbers, simulate the first few steps by hand. Number 14 is the perfect example. If you dive straight into dividing, you get a round, wrong answer. If you write down where the snail is at the end of each day, the trick shows up on its own: on the last day it does not slide back, because it is already out.

The answers

1. A map.
2. A hole. The more earth you take out, the bigger it is.
3. A clock.
4. A staircase.
5. Silence.
6. A comb. A saw and a zip also qualify.
7. SHORT. Add ER and it becomes SHORTER.
8. HEROINE. HE, HER, HERO, HEROINE.
9. BOOKKEEPER. The OO, KK and EE run back to back. (Bookkeeping works too.)
10. Everest. It was already the highest before anyone measured it; being discovered did not make it grow.
11. A 20p and a 10p. The wording only rules out one of them being a 20p, not both.
12. They are three people: grandfather, father and son. The father is also the grandfather's son, so there are two fathers and two sons among three people.
13. His own son. «My father's son» can only be the man himself, since he has no brothers. So he is the father of the man in the photograph.
14. Eight days. Each full day nets 1 metre, so at the start of day 8 it is at 7 metres; that day it climbs 3, reaches 10, and it is out before it can slide back.
15. The letter E. Everything, place, eternity, time and space.

If you are still in the mood

Riddles are one of the few puzzles where practice changes not your speed but the kind of suspicion you bring: by doing them, you start detecting the double meaning before you have finished reading. It is the same skill you use to read a tricky clue in a crossword.

MenteBrillante has a new riddle every day, with two free hints before you give up and a training mode for doing five in a row. Free in the browser, with nothing to install.