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Printable riddle sheet — Ages 12–15

56 riddles, ready to print — with the answer key on its own page.

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Ages 12–15 — Sharp Minds riddle sheet

56 riddles across 4 categories · write your guess on the line, then check the answer key at the end.

Wordplay

  1. 1. I'm a five-letter word. Even if you remove my last four letters, I'm still pronounced exactly the same. What word am I?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  2. 2. Which word in the English language is always spelled incorrectly, no matter which dictionary you check?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  3. 3. I contain cities with no houses in them, mountains with no trees on them, and water with no fish in it. What am I?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  4. 4. I have a heart, yet it never beats. I have layers you peel away before you find the tender part inside. What am I?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  5. 5. I'm covered in sharp needles, yet I've never sewn a single stitch in my life. What am I?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  6. 6. I start out tall, but I get shorter every single time you use me for your schoolwork. What am I?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  7. 7. I'm an English word made of three doubled letters in a row (like -oo-, -kk-, -ee-). I'm someone who manages a company's financial records. What word am I?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  8. 8. What do you call a fish that has no eye?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  9. 9. I'm a five-letter word for something you might skip across a pond. Knock off my first two letters and I become the number 1. What word am I?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  10. 10. Which common English word runs nine letters long but contains only a single vowel?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  11. 11. Say me out loud and I could be any of three different words: one points at a place, one shows that something belongs to a group of people, and one is two words squeezed together. Spell all three.

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  12. 12. One nine-letter English word contains all five vowels — A, E, I, O, U — each exactly once and in perfect alphabetical order. It means treating a serious subject with unhelpful humour. What word is it?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  13. 13. I'm fifteen letters long and not one of my letters repeats — every single one is different. Fittingly, I describe a work that nobody can legally claim ownership of. What word am I?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  14. 14. Which is correct: "the yolk of the egg is white" or "the yolk of the egg are white"?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

Math & Logic

  1. 15. Two trains start 300 miles apart and travel toward each other — one at 60 mph, the other at 40 mph. How long until they meet?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  2. 16. The sum of three consecutive whole numbers is 72. What are the three numbers?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  3. 17. A rectangular garden is twice as long as it is wide. Its perimeter is 60 meters. What are its dimensions?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  4. 18. If 5 machines can make 5 widgets in 5 minutes, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  5. 19. You have an unmarked 3-liter jug and an unmarked 5-liter jug. How can you measure out exactly 4 liters of water?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  6. 20. What is the smallest 4-digit palindrome (reads the same forwards and backwards) that is also an even number?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  7. 21. What is the next number in this sequence: 2, 6, 12, 20, 30, ?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  8. 22. If you flip a fair coin 3 times, what is the probability of getting at least one heads?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  9. 23. A jacket is marked down 20% in a sale. At the register, a coupon takes a further 20% off the sale price. What is the total discount off the original price?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  10. 24. A jar holds red and blue marbles in a ratio of 3 to 5. There are 24 more blue marbles than red ones. How many marbles are in the jar altogether?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  11. 25. You drive 60 km to the next town at a steady 60 km/h, then drive the same 60 km home at a steady 30 km/h. What is your average speed for the round trip?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  12. 26. One tap fills a bathtub in 6 minutes. A second tap fills the same tub in 3 minutes. With both running together, how long does the tub take to fill?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  13. 27. In a class of 30 students, 18 play football and 15 play basketball. 5 students play neither sport. How many students play both?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  14. 28. Ten people meet at a party, and every person shakes hands with every other person exactly once. How many handshakes take place?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

Lateral Thinking

  1. 29. A man lives on the 12th floor of an apartment building. Every morning he takes the elevator all the way down to the ground floor. Every evening, he rides the elevator back up to only the 7th floor and walks the rest of the way — except on rainy days, when he rides it all the way to the 12th floor. Why?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  2. 30. A woman 'shoots' her husband, then holds him underwater for five minutes, and finally hangs him up. Five minutes later, the two of them sit down and enjoy a lovely dinner together. How is this possible?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  3. 31. A man is found dead in a locked room with no windows. The only things in the room are a puddle of water and a rope hanging from the ceiling. How did he die?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  4. 32. Two men play five games of checkers. Each man wins the same number of games, and there are no ties. How is this possible?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  5. 33. A boy is rushed to the hospital emergency room. The ER doctor looks at him and says, 'I can't operate on him — he's my son!' But the doctor is not the boy's father. How is this possible?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  6. 34. How can a man go eight full days without sleep?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  7. 35. You're in a room with no doors and no windows. All you have is a mirror and a table. How do you get out?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  8. 36. A cowboy rides into town on Friday, stays for three days, and rides back out on Friday. How is that possible?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  9. 37. A woman sits alone in a pitch-dark room — no lamp, no candle, no phone, no screen of any kind — and reads a whole book from cover to cover. How?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  10. 38. A night watchman tells his boss he dreamed the boss's morning flight would crash. The boss cancels his ticket, the plane really does go down — and the boss fires the watchman anyway. Why?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  11. 39. A man walks into his living room and finds Bubbles and Splash lying dead on the carpet, surrounded by broken glass and a spreading puddle of water. Nobody else has been in the house all day. What happened?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  12. 40. In the middle of an empty field, a carrot, two lumps of coal, and an old scarf lie together on the wet grass. Nobody put them there and nobody dropped them. How did they get there?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  13. 41. A shopkeeper sells 1 for one dollar, 25 for two dollars, and 300 for three dollars. Every customer knows exactly what they are buying, and nobody finds the pricing strange. What is she selling?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  14. 42. Whoever makes me has no use for me. Whoever buys me is not buying me for themselves. Whoever ends up using me never knows it. What am I?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

Trivia

  1. 43. What is the chemical symbol for gold?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  2. 44. In which year did World War II end?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  3. 45. What is the largest ocean on Earth?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  4. 46. Who wrote the play 'Romeo and Juliet'?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  5. 47. What organelle is often called the "powerhouse of the cell"?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  6. 48. How many sides does a hexagon have?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  7. 49. About how fast does light travel, in kilometers per second?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  8. 50. What is the capital city of Australia?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  9. 51. Which planet in our solar system is tipped so far over — roughly 98 degrees — that it effectively rolls around the Sun on its side?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  10. 52. What is the longest river in Africa?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  11. 53. Which two gases make up about 99% of the air in Earth's atmosphere?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  12. 54. In which year did the Berlin Wall fall?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  13. 55. What do the three letters in "DNA" stand for?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

  14. 56. Which ancient Greek thinker gives his name to the theorem that a² + b² = c² in a right-angled triangle?

    My guess: ______________________________________________

Answer key — Ages 12–15

Wordplay

  1. 1. Queue — "Queue" and "Q" sound identical.
  2. 2. The word "incorrectly" itself — A classic pun — whatever word you name, the honest answer to "which word is spelled incorrectly" is the word "incorrectly."
  3. 3. A map
  4. 4. An artichoke
  5. 5. A pine tree
  6. 6. A pencil
  7. 7. Bookkeeper — B-O-O-K-K-E-E-P-E-R contains "oo," "kk," and "ee" back to back — a rare feature in English.
  8. 8. A "fsh" — It's missing its "eye" — the letter I.
  9. 9. Stone — S-T-O-N-E, minus the S and the T, leaves ONE.
  10. 10. Strengths — S-T-R-E-N-G-T-H-S — nine letters, and that lone "e" is the only vowel in the whole word.
  11. 11. There, their, and they're — Three homophones — identical in sound, completely different in spelling and job.
  12. 12. Facetious — F-A-C-E-T-I-O-U-S. "Abstemious" pulls off the same trick.
  13. 13. Uncopyrightable — U-N-C-O-P-Y-R-I-G-H-T-A-B-L-E: fifteen letters, fifteen different letters. A word with no repeated letter is called an isogram, and this is the longest one usually cited in English.
  14. 14. Neither — the yolk of an egg is yellow. — The question dares you to argue grammar and quietly hopes you never check the fact.

Math & Logic

  1. 15. 3 hours — Their combined closing speed is 100 mph, and 300 ÷ 100 = 3.
  2. 16. 23, 24, and 25 — n + (n+1) + (n+2) = 72 → 3n + 3 = 72 → n = 23.
  3. 17. 10 meters wide by 20 meters long — l + w = 30 and l = 2w, so 3w = 30, giving w = 10 and l = 20.
  4. 18. 5 minutes — Each machine makes 1 widget every 5 minutes — adding more machines making more widgets in parallel doesn't change that per-machine time.
  5. 19. Fill the 5L jug, pour into the 3L jug until it's full (2L stays in the 5L jug). Empty the 3L jug, then pour that 2L into it. Fill the 5L jug again, then top off the 3L jug (which needs 1 more liter) from it — that leaves exactly 4L in the 5L jug.
  6. 20. 2002 — The last digit has to match the first and be even; 1 is odd, so the smallest working first/last digit is 2, giving 2002.
  7. 21. 42 — The differences between terms increase by 2 each time (4, 6, 8, 10, 12); each term is n×(n+1).
  8. 22. 7/8 — 1 − (probability of all tails) = 1 − (1/2)³ = 1 − 1/8 = 7/8.
  9. 23. 36% — The second cut applies to the already-reduced price: 0.8 × 0.8 = 0.64, so you pay 64% of the original — a 36% discount, not the 40% the two numbers suggest.
  10. 24. 96 — Write the counts as 3k and 5k. The difference 2k = 24, so k = 12 — that is 36 red and 60 blue, 96 in all.
  11. 25. 40 km/h — The trip out takes 1 hour and the trip back takes 2 — 120 km in 3 hours. Averaging the two speeds (45) is the trap: you spend twice as long travelling at the slower one.
  12. 26. 2 minutes — Add the rates, not the times: 1/6 + 1/3 = 1/2 of a tub per minute, so one full tub takes 2 minutes.
  13. 27. 8 — 30 − 5 = 25 students play at least one sport. 18 + 15 = 33 counts every both-player twice, so 33 − 25 = 8 play both.
  14. 28. 45 — Each of the 10 people shakes 9 other hands, giving 90 — but that counts every handshake once from each side, so the real total is 90 ÷ 2 = 45.

Lateral Thinking

  1. 29. He's too short to reach the 12th-floor button, but on rainy days he uses his umbrella to press it.
  2. 30. She's a photographer — she took his photo, developed the film in water, and hung it up to dry.
  3. 31. He stood on a block of ice to hang himself, and the ice melted, leaving behind the puddle.
  4. 32. They aren't playing each other — each man is playing different opponents.
  5. 33. The doctor is the boy's mother.
  6. 34. He sleeps at night. — The riddle plays on "days" meaning daytime hours, not full 24-hour periods.
  7. 35. Look in the mirror, see what you "saw," take the saw, and cut the table in half — two halves make a whole, and you climb out through the hole.
  8. 36. His horse is named Friday.
  9. 37. She's blind, and the book is in braille — she reads with her fingertips, so light makes no difference to her.
  10. 38. To have dreamed it, the watchman must have been asleep — on the night shift he was paid to stay awake through.
  11. 39. Bubbles and Splash are goldfish — their bowl was knocked off the shelf and shattered.
  12. 40. They were the face and clothes of a snowman, and the snowman melted out from under them.
  13. 41. House numbers — she charges a dollar per digit. — "1" is one digit, "25" is two, "300" is three.
  14. 42. A coffin

Trivia

  1. 43. Au
  2. 44. 1945
  3. 45. The Pacific Ocean
  4. 46. William Shakespeare
  5. 47. The mitochondria
  6. 48. 6
  7. 49. About 300,000 km/s
  8. 50. Canberra — A commonly missed fact — Sydney is the biggest city, but Canberra is the capital.
  9. 51. Uranus
  10. 52. The Nile
  11. 53. Nitrogen and oxygen — Roughly 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen; argon, carbon dioxide and the rest share the last 1%.
  12. 54. 1989 — The border crossings were thrown open on the night of 9 November 1989.
  13. 55. Deoxyribonucleic acid
  14. 56. Pythagoras

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