Mysterious riddles that can be solved from a child’s point of view. The more flexible your thinking, the higher your chances of getting them right!
I’ve gathered some riddles for children.
Many of them are fun to solve like a game, and they’re sure to train the brain and boost kids’ thinking skills!
There are also some riddles that turn out to be surprisingly tricky once you start thinking about them, so adults should give them a try too.
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Riddles solvable from a child’s perspective. The more flexible your thinking, the higher your chances of getting them right! (11–20)
What time is it now?
See the answer
two characters
When someone asks, “What time is it now?” you’d normally answer with a time like three o’clock or six o’clock, right? But this riddle is different. If you focus on the phrase “What time is it now?” itself, it contains two words—“now” and “what time”—so together it makes ‘two characters’ (ni-moji).
Daddy frog goes ribbit-ribbit-ribbit, Mommy frog goes ribbit-ribbit, so what sound does the baby frog make?
See the answer
I won’t cry.
Young frogs are still in the tadpole stage, so they can’t croak like adult frogs. That’s why the answer is “they don’t cry/make sounds.” Comparing them to the calls of their father and mother helps you notice the differences in development. Not only appearance but also whether they can make sounds is a point of growth.
What can go anywhere but doesn’t move?
Do many kids love traveling? Just going somewhere different from usual makes you feel excited, doesn’t it? So let’s try this riddle: “What can go anywhere but doesn’t move?” When you think of going anywhere, vehicles like cars, bicycles, and trains come to mind, but they all move, right? So those aren’t the answer.
If you think about something that makes you feel like you’ve gone somewhere without actually going, you might reach the answer.
The correct answer is “a map.” On a map, you can go to various countries, but the map itself doesn’t move.
Why are there sneakers whose laces never come undone no matter how much you run around?
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Sneaker laces sometimes come undone while you’re wearing them, right? You can just retie them when they come loose, but if your hands are full, you end up walking with untied laces—your shoes feel like they’re about to slip off, and you might even trip over the laces.
A lot of people probably have those quietly annoying memories.
Here’s a quiz about lace-up sneakers! Sneakers whose laces never come undone no matter how much you run around… sounds like a dream product, doesn’t it? But in fact, kids are already wearing this dream-like item.
You might figure out the answer just by looking at your own sneakers!
There are 5 candies. If you lick one, how many are there?
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It seems like a question that would trip up adults more than children.
When you read the problem statement, you instinctively want to treat it like an arithmetic problem and think, “5 – 1 = 4, so the answer is 4!” But remember, it’s a trick question.
The hint to solving it is that the candy wasn’t given to someone else, nor did it disappear.
If you think about how many candies you have after you lick one, you should arrive at the correct answer.
An elementary school student with a flexible mind might solve it right away!
A turtle, a camel, and a rhinoceros are shopping. What will they buy?
A turtle, a camel, and a rhino go shopping…
When you imagine it, you can’t help but wonder what on earth is going on—sounds like a riddle, right? But let’s set that aside for now! Since they’re shopping, they must each have something they want to buy.
Still, thinking about items related to each animal won’t solve this puzzle.
You need to approach it from a completely different angle.
The key is to read the question repeatedly.
If you connect ‘kame’ (turtle), ‘rakuda’ (camel), and ‘sai’ (rhino), you get ‘kamera kudasai’ (which means ‘a camera, please’ in Japanese).
So the answer is ‘camera’!
What animal is bigger than a whale but smaller than a killifish?
See the answer
dolphin
To say that there’s no animal bigger than a whale and smaller than a killifish, we use a pun: we say “iruka” (which means dolphin) as a play on words with “inai” (there isn’t). The trick is to change the intonation when you say the comeback line, like “Sonna no iruka!” (which can sound like “Is that a dolphin?” or “Who would buy that?” depending on intonation). The correct answer is “iruka” (dolphin).
A truck loaded with watermelon, bananas, and apples dropped something. What did it drop?
See the answer
speed
What the truck dropped was not the fruit it was carrying, but its speed (velocity). This indicates that the truck suddenly slowed down. In other words, even if it was loaded with watermelons, bananas, and apples, what actually gets dropped isn’t the cargo, but the speed of its movement.
A taxi driver is going the wrong way down the road, but the police don’t stop him. Why is that?
See the answer
Because it’s the driver who’s running
The reason the taxi driver is going the wrong way down the road is that he isn’t driving a car—he’s walking or running himself. In other words, it’s a person running, not a car, so the police don’t stop him. The key is that it’s a play on the meaning of the words.
Today is Monday. Tomorrow is Tuesday. What day is the day after tomorrow?
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♬ Slow and comical BGM(1083863) – Blanket
When trying to answer this question, wouldn’t most people say, “You’re supposed to answer Wednesday, but the trick is that the answer is Thursday!”? That’s what common sense suggests, right? In fact, if a small child answered that way, I’d be tempted to mark it correct—they’re being clever.
However, the answer is actually neither Wednesday nor Thursday.
The key to finding the answer is to focus on the word “asatte” in the problem statement.
Look closely: while “today” and “tomorrow” are written in kanji, “asatte” is written in hiragana… What does that imply?