Free riddles
Riddles for a gate or a railing
A gate works when the way through is obvious from far off and the tag is not. Hinges, latches and the underside of a top rail hold a label out of sight while the target itself stays visible. Keep to gates that stand open: a group made to climb something is a group about to hurt itself.
Ages 6 to 9
One image per sentence, and the answer is visible from where you stand.
I squeak when you push me and I bang when you forget me.
Hiding placeA gate
I have bars and I am not a prison. You push me to get into the garden.
Hiding placeA gate
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
Ages 10 to 14
A turn of phrase to unpick, and a sting in the last line.
Five bars and a latch that always sticks. Farmers curse me, walkers climb me.
Hiding placeA field gate
Two posts, one latch, and three hundred years of hands lifting it in the very same place.
Hiding placeA field gate
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
Adults
An allusion, a piece of irony, and a sentence that flips on its final word.
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
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
Expert
A misleading surface, and a sentence that does not give way on first reading.
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
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
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.