Looking for riddles that are not too babyish and not impossible? These 100 riddles for middle schoolers and teens are made for ages 11 to 15 – quick warm-ups, funny school riddles, tricky brain teasers, math riddles and a hard round for the class genius.
They work for classroom warm-ups, road trips and group chats. Every answer is hidden – tap “Show answer” when everyone has guessed.
Contents
- Warm-Up Riddles
- Funny Riddles for Middle School
- Tricky Riddles and Brain Teasers
- Math Riddles for Middle Schoolers
- Hard Riddles for Teens
- Using Riddles in the Classroom
- More Riddles and Brain Teasers
- Frequently Asked Questions
Warm-Up Riddles
1. What has to be broken before you can use it?
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Answer: An egg
2. What gets bigger the more you take away from it?
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Answer: A hole
3. What has a thumb and four fingers but isn’t alive?
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Answer: A glove
4. What can fill a room but takes up no space?
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Light
5. What has a bed but never sleeps, and a bank but no money?
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Answer: A river
6. What kind of band never plays any music?
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Answer: A rubber band
7. What has a spine but no bones?
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Answer: A book
8. What is full of holes but still holds water?
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Answer: A sponge
9. What has a ring but no finger?
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Answer: A telephone
10. You throw it out when you want to use it and pull it back in when you’re done. What is it?
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Answer: An anchor
11. What has legs but never walks?
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Answer: A table
12. What goes up and down but never moves?
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Answer: A staircase
13. What gets sharper the more you use it?
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Answer: Your brain
14. What runs all the way around the yard without moving?
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Answer: A fence
15. I have branches, but no fruit, trunk or leaves. What am I?
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Answer: A bank
16. What has one head, one foot and four legs?
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Answer: A bed
17. What goes through cities and fields but never moves?
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Answer: A road
18. What has four wheels and flies?
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Answer: A garbage truck 😄
19. What is always in front of you but can never be seen?
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Answer: The future
20. What starts with P, ends with E and has thousands of letters?
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Answer: A post office
Funny Riddles for Middle School
21. Why did the math book look so sad?
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Answer: It had too many problems.
22. Why was the broom late for school?
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Answer: It over-swept.
23. What is a teacher’s favourite nation?
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Expla-nation
24. Why did the student eat his homework?
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Answer: The teacher said it was a piece of cake.
25. Why did the music teacher need a ladder?
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Answer: To reach the high notes.
26. What do elves learn in school?
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Answer: The elf-abet
27. Why did the scarecrow win an award?
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Answer: He was outstanding in his field.
28. What kind of tree fits in your hand?
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Answer: A palm tree
29. What has ears but can’t hear?
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Corn 🌽
30. Why can’t a bicycle stand up on its own?
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Answer: It’s two-tired.
31. What did the zero say to the eight?
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Answer: “Nice belt!”
32. Why are ghosts bad liars?
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Answer: You can see right through them.
33. What do you call cheese that isn’t yours?
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Nacho cheese
34. Why did the cookie go to the doctor?
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Answer: It was feeling crummy.
35. Which word is spelled wrong in every dictionary?
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Answer: “Wrong”
36. What starts with E, ends with E and contains only one letter?
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Answer: An envelope
37. What did one wall say to the other wall?
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Answer: “I’ll meet you at the corner.”
38. Why did the computer go to the doctor?
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Answer: It had a virus.
39. Why did the geometry lesson take so long?
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Answer: The teacher kept going off on a tangent.
40. What has 13 hearts but no other organs?
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Answer: A deck of cards
Tricky Riddles and Brain Teasers
41. There are six apples in a bowl and you take away four. How many do you have?
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Four – the ones you took.
42. What word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?
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Short (shorter)
43. What word contains all 26 letters?
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Alphabet
44. What has its bottom at the top?
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Answer: Your legs
45. What can go up a chimney down, but can’t go down a chimney up?
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Answer: An umbrella
46. How many letters are in “the alphabet”?
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11 – t-h-e-a-l-p-h-a-b-e-t.
47. What two words have the most letters?
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Post office
48. What can’t talk, but will always reply when spoken to?
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Answer: An echo
49. What has a head and a tail, is brown, and has no legs?
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Answer: A penny
50. What can you keep after giving it to someone?
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Answer: Your word (a promise)
51. A girl fell off a 20-foot ladder but wasn’t hurt at all. How?
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Answer: She fell off the bottom step.
52. Where does today come before yesterday?
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Answer: In the dictionary.
53. What kind of coat is best put on wet?
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Answer: A coat of paint
54. What always comes down but never goes up?
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Rain
55. In a race, you pass the person in second place. What place are you in now?
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Second place
56. Mary has four daughters, and each daughter has one brother. How many children does Mary have?
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Five – four girls and one boy.
57. How can you throw a ball as hard as you can and make it come back to you without it hitting anything?
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Answer: Throw it straight up.
58. I shave every day, but my beard stays the same. Who am I?
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Answer: A barber
59. It’s black when you buy it, red when you use it and grey when you throw it away. What is it?
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Charcoal
60. What can you hold without ever touching it?
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Answer: A conversation
Math Riddles for Middle Schoolers
61. I’m a three-digit number. My tens digit is 5 more than my ones digit, and my hundreds digit is 8 less than my tens digit. What number am I?
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194
62. When I was 6, my sister was half my age. Now I’m 70. How old is my sister?
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67 – she’s always 3 years younger.
63. How can you add eight 8s to get 1,000?
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888 + 88 + 8 + 8 + 8 = 1,000
64. What do you get if you multiply all the numbers on a phone keypad?
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0 – one of them is zero.
65. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much is the ball?
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5 cents – the bat is $1.05.
66. If 3 cats catch 3 mice in 3 minutes, how many cats are needed to catch 100 mice in 100 minutes?
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3 cats – each cat catches one mouse every 3 minutes.
67. What is half of 2 plus 2?
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3 – half of 2 is 1, plus 2.
68. Which is more: six dozen dozen or half a dozen dozen?
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Six dozen dozen (864) – half a dozen dozen is only 72.
69. How many times can you subtract 5 from 25?
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Once – after that you’re subtracting from 20.
70. If a hen and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs does one hen lay in 6 days?
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4 eggs – one hen lays one egg every day and a half.
71. What is the smallest whole number that has the letter A in its English spelling?
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One thousand
72. When does 9 + 5 = 2?
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Answer: On a clock – 9 o’clock plus 5 hours is 2 o’clock.
73. What comes next: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, …?
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13 – each number is the sum of the two before it.
74. What comes next: 2, 6, 12, 20, 30, …?
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42 – add 4, 6, 8, 10, then 12.
75. How many 9s are there in the numbers from 1 to 100?
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20 – ten in the ones place (9, 19 … 99) and ten in the tens place (90–99).
76. Multiply me by any number and the answer is always the same. What number am I?
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0
77. A snail climbs 3 feet up a 10-foot wall every day and slides back 2 feet every night. How many days to reach the top?
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8 days – after 7 days it’s at 7 feet, and on day 8 it climbs the last 3.
78. What is half of a quarter of a fifth of 400?
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10
79. What comes next: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, …?
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36 – they’re square numbers.
80. A clock takes 5 seconds to strike 6 o’clock. How long does it take to strike 12?
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11 seconds – 6 strikes have 5 gaps of 1 second; 12 strikes have 11 gaps.
Hard Riddles for Teens
81. The person who makes it sells it. The person who buys it never uses it. The person who uses it never knows. What is it?
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Answer: A coffin
82. What disappears the moment you say its name?
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Silence
83. What can be measured but has no length, width or height?
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Time (or temperature)
84. What has a heart that doesn’t beat?
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Answer: An artichoke
85. I’m light as a feather, yet the strongest person can’t hold me for five minutes. What am I?
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Answer: Your breath
86. Which English word sounds the same even after you remove four of its five letters?
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Queue
87. Which English word has three double letters in a row?
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Bookkeeper (oo-kk-ee)
88. I’m a word of three letters. Add two more and there will be fewer of me. What word am I?
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Few (fewer)
89. What five-letter word has only one left when you take away two letters?
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Stone – remove S and T and you have “one”.
90. Feed me and I live; give me a drink and I die. What am I?
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Fire
91. Poor people have it, rich people need it, and if you eat it you die. What is it?
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Nothing
92. What can be broken but is never held?
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Answer: A promise
93. Which word is wrong if you pronounce it right, but right if you pronounce it wrong?
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Answer: “Wrong”
94. Name an 8-letter word that stays a word each time you remove one letter, all the way down to a single letter.
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Starting → staring → string → sting → sing → sin → in → I
95. Which travels faster – heat or cold?
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Heat – you can catch a cold!
96. I have keys but no locks, space but no room, and you can enter but never go inside. What am I?
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Answer: A keyboard
97. What is the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space, and the beginning of every end?
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Answer: The letter E
98. There are two in a corner, one in a room, none in a house, but one in a shelter. What is it?
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Answer: The letter R
99. What has a tongue but can’t talk, and gets tied up but never complains?
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Answer: A shoe
100. A word I know has six letters; take away one and twelve remains. What’s the word?
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Dozens – remove the S and you have “dozen”.
Using Riddles in the Classroom
- Riddle of the day: write one riddle on the board as students arrive and reveal the answer at the end of class.
- Team challenge: split the class into teams – 1 point for warm-ups, 2 for tricky and math, 3 for hard riddles.
- Explain it: for math riddles, give the point only if the student can explain the answer.
- Make your own: ask students to write a riddle about a topic you’re studying.
More Riddles and Brain Teasers
- Riddle of the Day – a new riddle every day
- Math Riddles with Answers
- Logic Puzzles with Answers
- 60 Mystery Riddles
- Funny Riddles
- 100 Fun Trivia Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What are good riddles for middle schoolers?
Riddles with a clever twist rather than hard facts, like “What has a spine but no bones?” (a book) or “Where does today come before yesterday?” (in the dictionary).
What is a good riddle for a 12-year-old?
“A bat and a ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much is the ball?” Most people say 10 cents – the answer is 5 cents.
What is the hardest riddle for teens?
Try “Name an 8-letter word that stays a word each time you remove one letter.” The answer is STARTING → staring → string → sting → sing → sin → in → I.
How can teachers use riddles in class?
Use one as a warm-up at the start of class, as a team game, or as a reward at the end of a lesson. Math riddles also make great “explain your thinking” tasks.