Free riddles
Riddles to hide under a bench
Every park already has its bench, which is why it comes first to the person hiding and to the person looking. That only matters if the riddle fails to say WHICH: the one facing away from the path, the one with a plaque, the third from the fountain. Under the slats, never under the seat where a passer-by rests a bag.
Ages 6 to 9
One image per sentence, and the answer is visible from where you stand.
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
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
Ages 10 to 14
A turn of phrase to unpick, and a sting in the last line.
A brass plate says whose seat this was. Look under the person who is not here.
Hiding placeA memorial bench
My blue enamel flakes from the bottom up, and the number went before the name did.
Hiding placeA street nameplate
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
Adults
An allusion, a piece of irony, and a sentence that flips on its final word.
The only piece of furniture in the country that belongs to everybody.
Hiding placeA public bench
Cut from the same block as the wall that holds it, it has never once needed a repair.
Hiding placeA stone 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
Expert
A misleading surface, and a sentence that does not give way on first reading.
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
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
By hiding place
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.