A good tricky question works because your brain answers before you have finished thinking. Psychologist Shane Frederick built a whole test on that idea: his Cognitive Reflection Test, published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in 2005, asks three short questions with an obvious but wrong answer. Across 3,428 respondents, 33% got none of the three right and only 17% got all three. We see the same thing when we run riddle rounds in live AhaSlides quizzes: the room splits on the first gut answer, then groans together at the reveal.
Below are 57 tricky questions with answers in three rounds: 21 funny riddles, 20 mind-bending brain teasers, and 16 maths and logic puzzles, including Frederick’s three originals. Every answer sits right under its question, so you can play along or read them out as a quiz host.
Funny tricky questions with answers
Start here to warm a room up. These lean on puns and double meanings, so the answers get a laugh rather than a groan. Our pick: “What has four letters, sometimes has nine, but never has five?”, because people argue about it until someone reads it out slowly.
Wordplay riddles6 questions
What is so fragile it breaks even when you mention it?Answer: Silence.
What begins with an “e”, ends with an “e”, but only has one letter in it?Answer: An envelope.
What starts with a “t”, ends with a “t”, and is full of “t”?Answer: A teapot.
What has four letters, sometimes has nine, but never has five?Answer: It is a statement, not a question. The word “what” has four letters, “sometimes” has nine, and “never” has five, so every part is simply true.
What can you keep even after you have given it to someone else?Answer: Your word.
What has a ring but no finger?Answer: A telephone.
Everyday objects in disguise8 questions
I am not alive, but I grow; I do not have lungs, but I need air; I do not have a mouth, but water kills me. What am I?Answer: Fire.
What runs but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a head but never weeps, and has a bed but never sleeps?Answer: A river.
What has a heart that does not beat?Answer: An artichoke.
What goes up and down but always stays in the same place?Answer: A staircase.
I am not alive, but I can die. What am I?Answer: A battery.
What gets wetter the more it dries?Answer: A towel.
I am tall when I am young, and short when I am old. What am I?Answer: A candle.
What has a neck and a cap but no head?Answer: A bottle.
Trick questions7 questions
What is the biggest problem with snow boots?Answer: They melt. The joke is that the boots are made of snow.
A 30-metre chain ties a tiger to a tree. There is a patch of grass 31 metres from the tree. How does the tiger reach the grass?Answer: It does not need to. Tigers are carnivores, so the grass never tempts it.
What can you hold in your left hand but never in your right hand?Answer: Your right elbow.
What has four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?Answer: A person, who crawls as a baby, walks as an adult, and leans on a stick in old age.
What goes up but never comes back down?Answer: Your age.
Which month of the year has 28 days?Answer: All of them.
What can you catch but never throw?Answer: A cold.
Mind-bending tricky questions with answers
These riddles describe everyday things in a strange way, so the answer hides in plain sight. Our pick: “Which one do you open first?”, since nearly everyone jumps straight to the fridge.
Answers hiding in plain sight6 questions
What is always right in front of you, but you can never see it?Answer: The future.
What is always coming but never arrives?Answer: Tomorrow.
The more you take of it, the more you leave behind. What is it?Answer: Footsteps.
The more of it there is, the less you see. What is it?Answer: Darkness.
What happens once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?Answer: The letter “m”.
Written in capital letters, which five-letter word still reads the same when you turn it upside down?Answer: SWIMS.
Objects that play tricks10 questions
What has keys but cannot open a single lock?Answer: A keyboard (a piano also counts).
What can be cracked, made, told, and played?Answer: A joke.
What has branches, but no bark, no leaves, and no fruit?Answer: A bank.
What must be broken before you can use it?Answer: An egg.
What is black when you buy it, red when you use it, and grey when you throw it away?Answer: Charcoal.
What has a thumb and four fingers but is not alive?Answer: A glove.
What has one eye but cannot see?Answer: A needle.
What can go up a chimney down, but cannot go down a chimney up?Answer: An umbrella. It fits when closed (down), but not when open (up).
What is full of holes but still holds water?Answer: A sponge.
I have cities, but no houses. I have forests, but no trees. I have water, but no fish. What am I?Answer: A map.
A riddle from this list run as a live AhaSlides quiz, with the room’s answers shown on screen.
Read the question twice4 questions
What happens if you throw a red T-shirt into the Black Sea?Answer: It gets wet.
Why did the man run around his bed at night?Answer: To catch up on his sleep.
Name two things you cannot eat before breakfast.Answer: Lunch and dinner.
At 7am you are fast asleep when there is a loud knock at the door. Your parents are outside, ready for breakfast. In the fridge you have bread, coffee, juice and butter. Which one do you open first?Answer: The door.
Maths and logic tricky questions with answers
The first three are the original Cognitive Reflection Test questions; the rest mix real arithmetic with a few logic traps dressed up as sums. For more practice, try our maths quiz questions. Our pick: the bat and the ball, as the answer that jumps out first (10p) is wrong.
Cognitive Reflection Test classics3 questions
A bat and a ball cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?Answer: 5p. If the ball were 10p, the bat would be £1.10 and the pair would cost £1.20.
If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?Answer: 5 minutes. Each machine makes one widget in 5 minutes, however many machines there are.
A patch of lily pads doubles in size every day. If it takes 48 days to cover the whole lake, how long does it take to cover half the lake?Answer: 47 days. It doubles on the last day, so it was half the size the day before.
Number puzzles6 questions
If 3 people can paint 3 houses in 3 days, how many people are needed to paint 6 houses in 6 days?Answer: 3 people. Each person paints one house every 3 days, so in 6 days three people finish 6 houses.
How can you add eight 8s to make exactly 1000?Answer: 888 + 88 + 8 + 8 + 8 = 1000.
What is the next number in this sequence: 32, 45, 60, 77, ___?Answer: 96. The gaps grow by two each time: +13, +15, +17, +19, so 77 + 19 = 96.
What is the value of X in the equation 2X + 5 = X + 10?Answer: X = 5. Subtract X and 5 from both sides and you are left with X = 5.
What is the total of the first 20 even numbers?Answer: 420. That is 2 + 4 + 6 + … + 40, which equals 2 × (1 + 2 + … + 20), or 2 × 210.
Is there a place where you can add 2 to 11 and end up with 1?Answer: A clock. Two hours after 11 o’clock is 1 o’clock.
Quick maths checks work well as True or False slides, like this prime number question.
Logic traps7 questions
A farmer has 17 sheep. All but 9 run away. How many are left?Answer: 9. “All but 9” means nine stayed.
A bowl holds six apples. If you take four apples away, how many do you have?Answer: Four, the ones you took.
How many sides does a house have?Answer: Two, the inside and the outside.
Ten ostriches are standing in a field. If four of them decide to fly away, how many are left in the field?Answer: Ten. Ostriches cannot fly.
How can you go 25 days without sleep?Answer: By sleeping at night. The question only asks about the days.
A man lives on the 100th floor. On rainy days he rides the lift all the way up. On sunny days he only rides to the 50th floor and walks the rest. Why?Answer: He is too short to reach the top button, so he can only press up to the 50th floor. On rainy days he uses his umbrella to reach the 100th-floor button.
Everyone at a dinner who drank the iced punch fell ill, except two guests who drank it too. How is that possible?Answer: The poison was frozen into the ice cubes. The two who stayed well drank quickly, before the ice had time to melt; everyone who sipped slowly let the poison seep into their glass.
How to run your own tricky questions quiz
Reading riddles aloud is fun; watching a whole room commit to the wrong answer is better. AhaSlides turns your questions into a live quiz that people join from their phones. Here is how to set one up.
Sign up for free. Create an AhaSlides account and start a new presentation, or pick a quiz template from the library.
Match the slide type to the question. Riddles work best as Short Answer slides, where players type what they think the answer is, so nobody can guess from a list of options. Use Pick Answer for multiple choice, and True or False for quick maths checks.
Mix in a puzzle round. Match Pairs and Correct Order slides make good bonus rounds between riddles.
Present it live. Share the join code, and the leaderboard updates after every question. If people would rather play in their own time, set the quiz to self-paced instead.
On a Short Answer slide, players type their answer instead of picking from options.
A Match Pairs word puzzle makes a quick bonus round between riddles.
Keep each question on screen for 20 to 30 seconds. That is long enough for the trick to land, and short enough that nobody has time to talk themselves out of their first answer. For more quiz formats, see our list of interactive presentation games.
The leaderboard updates after each question, which keeps the whole room competing.
Frequently asked questions
What are tricky questions?
Tricky questions are designed to mislead you, usually by inviting an obvious answer that turns out to be wrong. They reward slowing down, reading the wording carefully and thinking in an unusual way, which is why people use them for fun and to test problem-solving.
What is the most famous tricky question?
The bat and ball question from the Cognitive Reflection Test is one of the best known: a bat and a ball cost £1.10, the bat costs £1 more than the ball, so how much is the ball? Most people’s first answer is 10p, but the right answer is 5p. The riddle of the Sphinx, about what walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three in the evening, is even older.
What are the hardest questions in the world?
The hardest questions are often the ones with no settled answer, so the list is subjective. Common examples include what came first, the chicken or the egg; can something come from nothing; what is the nature of consciousness; and what is the ultimate fate of the universe?
What are some good tricky questions for a quiz?
Pick questions with one clear answer that everyone accepts once it is revealed. The trick questions above, such as the ostriches, the 28-day month and the bat and ball, work in almost any quiz. For a broader mix, add a round from our general knowledge quiz questions.
