Life

Test Your Brain Power With These 69 Clever Riddles

What gets bigger the more you take away?

by Mackenzie Sylvester
A woman sits in a chair in her living room and reads riddles for adults on her tablet in her lap.
Kosamtu/E+/Getty Images

Even the smartest of smarties can get stumped by a few tricky riddles for adults. While tossing a few good jokes into slowing conversations liven things up for a moment, you’ll want something with a bit more substance to pick up the pace when your interactions hit a standstill. Since coming up with conversation starter after conversation starter can get a bit dry and unnatural-feeling after a while, consider storing some riddles in your back pocket to whip out to test people’s critical thinking skills and enrich your engagements when the discussion has you twiddling your thumbs and checking the clock.

Riddles are carefully crafted little word problems that aim to trick you with distracting or intentionally confusing verbiage. They invite you to look beyond the trees in order to see the forest — a feat easier said than done when it comes to some of these sneaky brain teasers. Whether you can solve them in a pinch or get stuck on one for half an hour, adult-level word problems and riddles are highly mentally stimulating, prompting some thoughtful and meaningful follow-up conversation. Plus, it’s always fun to flex your brain muscles to your friends, family, date, colleagues, or partner.

While you’ll find a few easier warm-up level word puzzles that a particularly clever kid may be able to crack, these riddles for adults are geared toward a grown-up audience. Get ready to stretch your smarts with these funny, tricky, easy, and clever riddles for adults.

Best Riddles For Adults: Questions

Catherine Falls Commercial/Moment/Getty Images
  1. What is so fragile that saying its name breaks it?
  2. What breaks yet never falls, and what falls yet never breaks?
  3. There is a woman in a boat. On a lake wearing a coat. If you want to know her name, it’s in the riddle I just wrote. What is the woman’s name.
  4. Where can you finish a book without finishing a sentence?
  5. What is it that no one wants to have, but no one wants to lose either?
  6. What runs, but never walks. Murmurs, but never talks. Has a bed, but never sleeps. And has a mouth, but never eats?

Best Riddles For Adults: Answers

  1. Silence.
  2. Day and night.
  3. What.
  4. Prison.
  5. A lawsuit.
  6. A river.

Tricky Riddles For Adults: Questions

pixdeluxe/E+/Getty Images
  1. What occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment, and never in 1,000 years?
  2. I have keys but no locks. I have space but no room. You can enter, but you can't go inside. What am I?
  3. How far can you walk into the woods?
  4. Two girls were born to the same mother, on the same day, at the same time, in the same month and year, and yet they're not twins. How can this be?
  5. What has 13 hearts but no other organs?
  6. What can travel all around the world without leaving its corner?

Tricky Riddles For Adults: Answers

  1. The letter “M.”
  2. A keyboard.
  3. Halfway. After that, you’re walking out.
  4. The two babies are part of a set of triplets.
  5. A deck of cards.
  6. A stamp.

Brain Teasers For Adults: Questions

pixdeluxe/E+/Getty Images
  1. Take me out of a window, and I leave a grieving wife. But stick me in a door, and I can save somebody's life. What am I?
  2. What do you throw out when you want to use it but take in when you don’t want to use it?
  3. What can go through glass without breaking it?
  4. What gets bigger the more you take away?

Brain Teasers For Adults: Answers

  1. The letter “N.”
  2. An anchor.
  3. Light.
  4. A hole.

Easy Riddles For Adults: Questions

Anastasiia Krivenok/Moment/Getty Images
  1. What letter in the alphabet has the most water in it?
  2. What belongs to you, but everyone else uses more than you?
  3. You answer me, though I never ask you questions. What am I?

Easy Riddles For Adults: Answers

  1. C.
  2. Your name.
  3. A phone.

Funny Riddles For Adults: Questions

Delmaine Donson/E+/Getty Images
  1. A man goes out for a walk during a storm with nothing to protect him from the rain. He doesn’t have a hat, a hood, or an umbrella. But by the end of his walk, there isn’t a single wet hair on his head. Why doesn’t the man have wet hair?
  2. What can you put in a bucket to make it weigh less?
  3. What goes up and never comes down?

Funny Riddles For Adults: Answers

  1. He’s bald.
  2. A hole.
  3. Your age.

Riddles For Adults About Work: Questions

milan2099/E+/Getty Images
  1. A man and his boss have the same parents, but are not siblings. How is this possible?
  2. I will live if I fall off a building. But if I fall into the water, then I will perish. What am I?
  3. Why did an invisible man turn down a job offer?
  4. I have pointed fangs, and I sit and wait. I have piercing force, and I crunch with weight. I grab my victims, but they do not fight. I join them each with a single, quick bite. What am I?

Riddles For Adults About Work: Answers

  1. He’s self-employed.
  2. A sheet of paper.
  3. Because he could not see himself doing the job.
  4. A stapler.

Riddles For Adults About Money: Questions

Delmaine Donson/E+/Getty Images
  1. I have branches, but no fruit, trunk, or leaves. What am I?
  2. What has a head, a tail, is brown, and has no legs?
  3. I have two coins equaling 15 cents. One if them is not a nickel. What are the two coins?

Riddles For Adults About Money: Answers

  1. A bank.
  2. A penny.
  3. A dime and a nickel. One of them is not a nickel, but the other one is.

Riddles For Adults About Relationships: Questions

Delmaine Donson/E+/Getty Images
  1. A wife shoots her husband, drowns him for five minutes, and then proceeds to hang him. Afterward, the couple enjoy a romantic dinner. How is this possible?
  2. Alice is looking at Bob, and Bob is looking at Charlie. Alice is in a relationship, Charlie is not. Is a person in a relationship looking at a single person?
  3. What can be touched but can't be seen?

Riddles For Adults About Relationships: Answers

  1. The wife is a photographer.
  2. Yes. Whether Bob is single or not, the statement is true either way.
  3. A heart.

Riddles For Adults About Letters And Words: Questions

Delmaine Donson/E+/Getty Images
  1. What word in the dictionary is spelled incorrectly?
  2. What five-letter word typed in all capital letters can be read the same upside down?
  3. What five-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?
  4. What is the longest word in the dictionary?
  5. What word contains all of the 26 letters?
  6. I am a five-letter word. I sound the same when you remove my first letter. I sound the same when you remove my third letter. I sound the same when my last letter is removed and I sound the same when all three are removed. What word am I?

Riddles For Adults About Letters And Words: Answers

  1. Incorrectly.
  2. SWIMS.
  3. Short.
  4. Smiles, because there is a mile between each S.
  5. Alphabet.
  6. Empty (m-pty, emty, emp-t, m-t).

Riddles For Adults About Home: Questions

Johner Images/Johner Images Royalty-Free/Getty Images
  1. What has one head, one foot, and four legs?
  2. You have a drawer that holds only 10 black socks and 10 white socks. You close your eyes and pull out three socks. Are you holding a matching pair of socks?
  3. I am neither a guest nor a trespasser, to this place I belong, it belongs also to me. What is it?
  4. I run around an entire yard without even moving. What am I?
  5. What has many teeth but can’t bite?
  6. What kind of coat is best put on wet?

Riddles For Adults About Home: Answers

  1. A bed.
  2. Yes.
  3. Home.
  4. A fence.
  5. A comb.
  6. A coat of paint.

Riddles For Adults About Life: Questions

AleksandarNakic/E+/Getty Images
  1. Poor people have it. Rich people need it. You can’t survive if you eat it. What is it?
  2. What can you catch, but not throw?

Riddles For Adults About Life: Answers

  1. Nothing.
  2. A cold.

Riddles For Adults About Animals: Questions

Nazar Rybak/E+/Getty Images
  1. What time is it when an elephant sits on a fence?
  2. A hunter leaves his cabin one morning. He walks 5 miles south, and then 5 miles west. He shoots a bear. He then walks 5 miles north and ends up back at his cabin. What color was the bear?
  3. You buy a rabbit. It can mate once every month and give birth to seven babies per litter. How many rabbits do you have after 12 months?

Riddles For Adults About Animals: Answers

  1. Time to fix the fence.
  2. White. It’s a polar bear and his cabin is at the North Pole.
  3. One. It takes two rabbits to breed.

Riddles For Adults About Food And Drinks: Questions

andreswd/E+/Getty Images
  1. What starts with T, ends with T, and has T in it?
  2. What is more useful when it is broken?
  3. Throw away the outside and cook the inside, then eat the outside and throw away the inside. What is it?
  4. How can you throw a raw egg on a concrete floor without breaking it?
  5. How many bananas can you eat with an stomach is empty?
  6. What has a neck but no head and wears a cap?

Riddles For Adults About Food And Drinks: Answers

  1. A teapot.
  2. An egg.
  3. Corn on the cob.
  4. The concrete floor won’t crack, but the egg will.
  5. Just one, after that it’s not empty anymore.
  6. A bottle.

Clever Riddles For Adults: Questions

Delmaine Donson/E+/Getty Images
  1. What gets shorter as it grows older?
  2. The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?
  3. What is always coming but never arrives?
  4. Before Mount Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain in the world?
  5. What has a bottom at the top?
  6. They come out at night without being called, and are lost in the day without being stolen. What are they?
  7. How many months have 28 days?

Clever Riddles For Adults: Answers

  1. A candle.
  2. Foot prints.
  3. Tomorrow.
  4. Mount Everest, it just wasn’t discovered yet.
  5. Legs.
  6. Stars.
  7. Every month has 28 days.

Riddles For Adults About Marriage: Questions

Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision/Getty Images
  1. Who has married many women but was never married?
  2. You see a boat filled with people. It has not sunk. But when you look back, you don’t see a single person on the boat. Why?

Riddles For Adults About Marriage: Answers

  1. The priest.
  2. All the people on board are married.

Riddles For Adults About Children: Questions

Anastasiia Krivenok/Moment/Getty Images
  1. Sara has four daughters, and each of her daughters has a brother. How many children does Sara have?
  2. Two fathers and two sons are in a car, yet only three people are in the car. How?
  3. David's father has three sons: Snap, Crackle, and _____?

Riddles For Adults About Children: Answers

  1. Five, each daughter has the same brother.
  2. They are grandfather, father and son.
  3. David.