Let's write some riddles!

[Nexilis]

Here's a few I've used in the past

Two mothers and two daughters went to a fair. Each won a prize yet only three prizes were given. How is this possible?

and

The one who makes me doesn't need me
The one who buys be doesn't use me
The one who uses me doesn't know it
What am I?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Two mothers and two daughters went to a fair. Each won a prize yet only three prizes were given. How is this possible?

Grandmother, mother, daughter.

The one who makes me doesn't need me
The one who buys be doesn't use me
The one who uses me doesn't know it
What am I?

Coffin.

 

[sjmiller]

The one who makes me doesn't need me
The one who buys be doesn't use me
The one who uses me doesn't know it
What am I?

I have used one similar to this. The way mine goes is:

The man who made it sold it.
The man who bought it doesn't need it.
The man who used it did not know it.
What is it?

For a clue we will say the riddle again and add the line:
But his six friends did.

 

[Merkuri]

Earlier riddle made me think of this one...

A man and his son are in a car crash. They are rushed to separate hospitals in separate towns. As the boy is taken out of the ambulance and brought to a surgeon, the surgeon looks down and says, "I can't operate on this boy, he's my son." How is this possible?

This one works better when told out loud:

You're a bus driver. At the first stop, you pick up three people. At the second stop, one person gets off and three more get on. At the third stop, two people get off and one gets on. At the fourth stop, no one gets off, and two people get on. At the fifth stop, one person gets off. ... What color is the bus driver's eyes?


They might take too long to do in the middle of an RPG session, but I've always liked "albatross puzzles", or "lateral thinking puzzles". One person gives a scenario and everyone else takes turns asking yes or no questions. The riddler can only answer "yes", "no", or possibly "irrelevant". The goal is for the questioners to figure out the story.

The name "albatross puzzle" comes from the (arguably) most famous puzzle. The scenario for this puzzle is:

A man walks into a bar and orders albatross. He gets his meal, takes one bite, then pulls out a gun and shoots himself.

I got such a kick out of figuring this one out with just yes or no questions.

They're good to play on long car trips, or when there's a power outage at work and nobody can get anything done because we all rely on computers. (That last one seriously happened to me. I started off with two or three people asking questions and by the time the power came back on I had a small army clustered around me.)

 

[Nexilis]

Earlier riddle made me think of this one...

A man and his son are in a car crash. They are rushed to separate hospitals in separate towns. As the boy is taken out of the ambulance and brought to a surgeon, the surgeon looks down and says, "I can't operate on this boy, he's my son." How is this possible?

This one works better when told out loud:

You're a bus driver. At the first stop, you pick up three people. At the second stop, one person gets off and three more get on. At the third stop, two people get off and one gets on. At the fourth stop, no one gets off, and two people get on. At the fifth stop, one person gets off. ... What color is the bus driver's eyes?


They might take too long to do in the middle of an RPG session, but I've always liked "albatross puzzles", or "lateral thinking puzzles". One person gives a scenario and everyone else takes turns asking yes or no questions. The riddler can only answer "yes", "no", or possibly "irrelevant". The goal is for the questioners to figure out the story.

The name "albatross puzzle" comes from the (arguably) most famous puzzle. The scenario for this puzzle is:

A man walks into a bar and orders albatross. He gets his meal, takes one bite, then pulls out a gun and shoots himself.

I got such a kick out of figuring this one out with just yes or no questions.

They're good to play on long car trips, or when there's a power outage at work and nobody can get anything done because we all rely on computers. (That last one seriously happened to me. I started off with two or three people asking questions and by the time the power came back on I had a small army clustered around me.)

For the first - It's his mother
For the second - Brown, but it depends on the person replying
For the third - [sblock] The man was a sailor who had been on a ship with little to no food and had been told that the meat he had been eating was albatross when in actuality the crew had been fed their fallen comrades. After making it to land and tasting actual albatross he realizes what he had really been eating and overcome with guilt kills himself [/sblock]

 

[Merkuri]

For the third...

Okay, there's no way you got the third one unless you already knew the answer or you googled it. I didn't really post that one with the intent that someone would try to answer it in this thread.

You might want to go back and edit your post to sblock that out. You're really doing yourself a disservice if you look up the answer to that puzzle instead of playing it out with someone.

 

[Nexilis]

Nope didn't google it. We did a few of those type of things in an AP class in HS

Now for a classic riddle

A box without hinges, clasp, or a lid but yet inside a golden treasure is hid.

 

[sjmiller]

Now for a classic riddle

A box without hinges, clasp, or a lid but yet inside a golden treasure is hid.

I usually tell it as: A box without hinges, key or lid; yet inside golden treasure is hid.
As a hint I can tell you this thing goes up white, but comes down yellow.

 

[sjmiller]

Merkuri, those last three you gave are what my group of enigmatologists usually call logic puzzles. The person asking the puzzle is expecting the recipient to ask additional questions to come to a logical conclusion.

For us, riddles are where a person gives an enigmatic or obscuring description of something and the recipient of the riddle should be able to garner the answer just from the description in the riddle. The riddle does not have to rhyme, though many of the famous ones do. A riddle is generally self contained, needing no further information.

Here's an example of a classic rhyming riddle.
Old Mother Twitchett had but one eye,
And a long tail which she let fly.
And every time she went over a gap,
She left a bit of her tail in a trap.

I will have to dig out my books (we write down all the ones we use) in order to find one that is a classic non-rhyming riddle.

 

[Nexilis]

Here's an example of a classic rhyming riddle.
Old Mother Twitchett had but one eye,
And a long tail which she let fly.
And every time she went over a gap,
She left a bit of her tail in a trap.

I will have to dig out my books (we write down all the ones we use) in order to find one that is a classic non-rhyming riddle.

That one's a

Spoiler

needle and thread

right