Free riddles
Riddles for a fountain, a pond or a stream
Water reads from a distance, which makes it a good target and a poor hiding place. Point the riddle at the water and leave the tag a few steps away, on the dry side: a fountain rim, the underside of a rail, a stone nobody sits on. Anything a splash reaches will be unreadable by the second team.
Ages 6 to 9
One image per sentence, and the answer is visible from where you stand.
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
Frogs sing at my place all spring, and by August I have shrunk to almost nothing.
Hiding placeA pond
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
Ages 10 to 14
A turn of phrase to unpick, and a sting in the last line.
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
I rise when it rains, I sink when the heat comes, and I never move an inch.
Hiding placeA pond
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
Adults
An allusion, a piece of irony, and a sentence that flips on its final word.
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
People once threw in a coin for a wish. These days they throw in a cigarette end.
Hiding placeA fountain
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
Expert
A misleading surface, and a sentence that does not give way on first reading.
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
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
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.