Free riddles
A hundred and twenty riddles, filtered as you need them
Take them, change them, use them. They are written for a hunt on real ground, so each one names a hiding place rather than an idea: that is the part nobody hands you.
Free to use · answers shown · laid out for printing
Choose what fits your ground
The two filters combine, and no combination comes back empty.
Riddles to hide in a tree
I have a hundred arms and I never wave. Every autumn I drop everything I own.
Hiding placeA tree
I used to be tall. Now I am a seat, and my rings give away my age.
Hiding placeA stump
Robin Hood would know me. I am old, I am hollow, and something is inside.
Hiding placeAn oak
My shadow goes right round the meadow in a day, and I have not taken a single step.
Hiding placeA tree in the middle of a field
Ovid would have called me a nymph who stopped running. Look where the trunk opens.
Hiding placeA hollow tree
Three owners have quarrelled over the field; not one ever disputed the boundary it marks.
Hiding placeA march oak
In summer everybody comes and sits under me. In winter nobody looks at me at all.
Hiding placeA big tree
More arms than an octopus, more fingers than a hand, and not one single bone.
Hiding placeA tree
It survived the axe because it was worth nothing, and that is exactly why it is the oldest.
Hiding placeA crooked tree
What Newton waited for, what the woodcutter counts, what the condemned man dreads: the same place, three times.
Hiding placeA tree
It was pruned once, sixty years ago, and made itself a pocket the rain cannot reach.
Hiding placeA pruning hollow
Its leaves only drop in spring, when the others are growing theirs: that delay is what gives it away.
Hiding placeAn oak
Somebody tied a rope round me, and children have been swinging from it ever since.
Hiding placeA thick branch
I am the giant’s skin: rough, grey, and nobody ever strokes me.
Hiding placeThe bark
I hold the giant upright, I am under your feet, and sometimes I come out of the ground.
Hiding placeA root
I am the door of a house nobody built, and my tenants have wings.
Hiding placeA nest box
Two initials and a heart, cut thirty years ago by people who no longer speak.
Hiding placeCarved bark
I wear the same coat on the north side all year, and it never dries out.
Hiding placeMoss on the trunk
It was planted on armistice day, and it is older than anybody who remembers why.
Hiding placeA memorial lime
It grew inside a ruin, which proves the roof came down before it did.
Hiding placeA tree in the walls
The ivy has dressed it so long that nobody knows which of the two holds the other up.
Hiding placeAn ivy-clad trunk
It began as a stone spat out by somebody passing through, and it is all that person left.
Hiding placeA lone tree
Three trunks, one stump: what looks like a family is in fact a single survivor.
Hiding placeA coppice stool
The west wind wrote its address on it: just look at the side it refuses to grow on.
Hiding placeA leaning tree
Riddles for a fountain, a pond or a stream
Coins fall into me and wishes float out. I sing without a mouth.
Hiding placeA fountain
I have a bed but never sleep, and I run all day without getting tired.
Hiding placeA stream
I have a mouth, a bed and a bank, and I have never spoken, slept or lent a penny.
Hiding placeA river
I was the village tap before taps. Now I am decoration with a very cold heart.
Hiding placeA pump
Narcissus stayed too long. All you will find here is the sky, upside down.
Hiding placeA pool
Cold, communal and merciless. Running water emptied it and nobody knocked it down.
Hiding placeA washhouse
Frogs sing at my place all spring, and by August I have shrunk to almost nothing.
Hiding placeA pond
I rise when it rains, I sink when the heat comes, and I never move an inch.
Hiding placeA pond
People once threw in a coin for a wish. These days they throw in a cigarette end.
Hiding placeA fountain
Nothing runs into it and nothing runs out, and yet its level tells you the last six months.
Hiding placeA field pond
It gave its name to the village, the village gave that name to the street, and nobody walks back to it.
Hiding placeA capped spring
It had to stop being useful before anybody would call it beautiful.
Hiding placeA fountain
I am round, I am deep, and a rope lowers a bucket into me.
Hiding placeA well
Animals come here to drink and leave without saying thank you.
Hiding placeA trough
You turn me and I cry. Without me the flowers would be thirsty.
Hiding placeA garden tap
I come down from a roof and give the rain back to the garden, one drop at a time.
Hiding placeA downpipe
I am the one place on the path you cross without a bridge and without wet knees.
Hiding placeA ford
I wait for a whole year of storms to be useful once.
Hiding placeA rain butt
It watered horses that no longer exist, outside an inn that exists even less.
Hiding placeA stone trough
Two steps, a coping, and the reminder that water did not always come out of a wall.
Hiding placeA covered well
The bridge made it pointless, and yet the crossing stones are still there.
Hiding placeAn old ford
It is older than the word that names it, and the word is older than the language.
Hiding placeA spring
In winter it steams, in summer it numbs your fingers: its temperature never moves, you do.
Hiding placeA resurgence
The miller dug it, the miller left, and it still runs without grinding anything.
Hiding placeA millrace
Riddles for a wall or a stone
A hundred stones stacked by hand. Look where one of them is missing.
Hiding placeA wall
I am a border to two fields and a house to three families of lizards.
Hiding placeA low wall
There is a date carved into me and nobody alive remembers the day it happened.
Hiding placeA datestone
The one the builders rejected, according to the book. Check the corner.
Hiding placeThe cornerstone
It was raised before writing existed, and three religions have borrowed it since.
Hiding placeA standing stone
I am grey, I am cold, and I have a dip where rainwater stays for days.
Hiding placeA big stone
Three hundred years upright, and not one drop of water holding it together.
Hiding placeA drystone wall
It marked a limit no paper knew, and both neighbours respected it more than the deeds.
Hiding placeA boundary stone
I climb without legs: you go up me one step at a time.
Hiding placeA stone stair
Pebbles piled up by walkers, to say that somebody came this way.
Hiding placeA cairn
They laid me flat so that feet would not sink in, and I have stayed ever since.
Hiding placeA flagstone
I am the one the mason put in last, right at the top, and without me it all comes down.
Hiding placeThe keystone
It bears a date, a mason’s name, and the only lie is the date.
Hiding placeA lintel stone
Taking it down would have cost more than building it, which is why it is still upright.
Hiding placeA terrace wall
A threshold, then a paving block, then a step: what counts is not what it is but how often it served.
Hiding placeA reused stone
What the glacier left behind on its way out, and what no man could have put there.
Hiding placeAn erratic boulder
Riddles to hide under a bench
Four legs, not one step. Pigeons stand on me and grandparents sit on me.
Hiding placeA bench
My back is flat and I only work at lunchtime.
Hiding placeA picnic table
A brass plate says whose seat this was. Look under the person who is not here.
Hiding placeA memorial bench
The only piece of furniture in the country that belongs to everybody.
Hiding placeA public bench
My blue enamel flakes from the bottom up, and the number went before the name did.
Hiding placeA street nameplate
Cut from the same block as the wall that holds it, it has never once needed a repair.
Hiding placeA stone bench
Its back is exactly upright, which dates it better than any plaque could.
Hiding placeA cast-iron bench
The wear on the wood says where people sit; the wear on the ground in front says for how long.
Hiding placeA well-used bench
I am wooden, I am wet in the morning, and nobody sits down before the sun has dried me.
Hiding placeA garden seat
Three legs, a round top, and glasses put down on me all summer.
Hiding placeA garden table
My timber was a tree, my ends were a foundry, and we have not shifted since.
Hiding placeA park seat
My slats have been painted seven times, and you can count the coats along the edge.
Hiding placeA repainted bench
It faces a view that a screen of trees has hidden for fifteen years, and nobody turned it round.
Hiding placeA viewpoint seat
Three slabs made into a top, and the certainty that people sat here before chairs existed.
Hiding placeA stone table
It is cut into the very wall of the house, so the watchman could sit without going in.
Hiding placeA porch seat
It waits for a bus that stopped running, and the shelter stayed because taking it down cost more.
Hiding placeA waiting bench
Riddles for a gate or a railing
I squeak when you push me and I bang when you forget me.
Hiding placeA gate
Five bars and a latch that always sticks. Farmers curse me, walkers climb me.
Hiding placeA field gate
Dante put a famously discouraging line above one of these. Ours is friendlier and sticks just the same.
Hiding placeA gate
Two leaves, a chain, and the comfortable illusion of being shut. Try the hinge instead.
Hiding placeA gate
I have bars and I am not a prison. You push me to get into the garden.
Hiding placeA gate
Two posts, one latch, and three hundred years of hands lifting it in the very same place.
Hiding placeA field gate
Its lock outlived its key, its wall outlived its house, and it outlived the pair of them.
Hiding placeA gate left standing
The wall came after it, and you can see it: the stonework stops dead against the upright.
Hiding placeAn early gateway
People step over me when they are in a hurry, and that is quicker than opening me.
Hiding placeA low wicket
I turn on myself and I let one person through at a time.
Hiding placeA turnstile
Both my posts are original; everything that ever hung between them has been changed three times.
Hiding placeA field barrier
Two standing stones, a lintel, and nothing left to open for a very long time.
Hiding placeAn old gateway
It guarded a garden that became a car park, and it carries on regardless.
Hiding placeAn iron gate
Its arch is older than the road beneath it, and nobody knows where the earlier road went.
Hiding placeA town gateway
Its width was worked out for a cart, and that is why no car fits through it.
Hiding placeA barn archway
Two hinges, no timber, and the exact measure of what iron was worth when the house burned.
Hiding placeA vanished gate
Riddles for a sign or a plaque
I point all day long and nobody ever thanks me.
Hiding placeA signpost
I stand very still, made of stone, so that you remember someone who cannot.
Hiding placeA statue
I am peppered with small round holes, and not one of them was made by a screw.
Hiding placeA shot-holed sign
Turn me around and I still point somewhere. That is the whole problem.
Hiding placeA signpost
A name, two dates, and a small line between them. Everything that mattered is in the line.
Hiding placeA memorial plaque
I am nailed to a post at the edge of the road, and drivers read me without slowing down.
Hiding placeA place-name sign
I carry an arrow and I aim at nobody. Follow me and you arrive; doubt me and you circle.
Hiding placeA fingerpost
Ninety-two names for a village that never held three hundred. Nobody reads the list through any more.
Hiding placeA war memorial
Two parishes have argued over who owns it since it fell, and neither will stand it up.
Hiding placeA boundary board
It was put back the wrong way round during repairs, and in forty years nobody has reported it.
Hiding placeA reversed direction arm
The only book in the village whose pages are stone and whose last line is a date.
Hiding placeA memorial stele
It was raised for a man whose deeds nobody remembers and whose name everybody knows.
Hiding placeA statue
I have a mouth at the front and nobody feeds me. The postman fills me.
Hiding placeA letterbox
I tell the time with no battery and no hands, but only when the weather is fine.
Hiding placeA sundial
I stand at the edge of the path, arms out sideways, and I point at nothing.
Hiding placeA wayside cross
I am painted on a tree every five hundred metres, and without me you get lost.
Hiding placeA waymark
I carry the name of a family that left the house twenty years ago.
Hiding placeA letterbox plate
I show the wind without ever following it, and I squeak when it changes.
Hiding placeA weathervane
It advertises a shop that shut forty years ago, and that is exactly what makes it precious.
Hiding placeA painted shopfront sign
Somebody straightens it every time a lorry clips it, and nobody knows who any more.
Hiding placeA street plate
A saint whose story nobody recalls, at a junction whose smaller branch nobody takes.
Hiding placeA wayside shrine
It counts the miles to a town the road no longer serves, since they built the bypass.
Hiding placeA milepost
The stonecutter ran out of room at the end, and it is the last word that carries the proof.
Hiding placeA cramped inscription
It has changed name three times without moving an inch, and the oldest of the three still shows underneath.
Hiding placeAn old street plate
How to make one of your own
Start from the hiding place, never from the wordplay. Look at what is actually on your ground, describe it as if it could speak, then remove the one word that gives it away. That last step is the whole job.
Make these riddles real
A riddle on paper stops at the answer. Here it opens a proximity radar, a QR label on a real hidden object, and a screen that says who found it first.