15+ Tricky Puzzles That Might Make You Do a Double Take

Puzzles do more than entertain. They give your brain a dopamine boost, easing stress and lifting mood. They also sharpen memory, enhance problem-solving, and strengthen neural connections.
Ready to put your mind to the test? Try these riddles.

1. Can you square this?

Answer: It sounds impossible, given a square has four lines, right? But that’s the trick — all you have to do is draw a square around these three lines, and voilà, you have a square “with three lines.”

2. I make a loud sound when I’m changing. When I do change, I get bigger but weigh less. What am I?

Answer: Popcorn

3. What’s always on the ground, but never gets dirty?

Answer: Shadows

4. Let’s try some math:

Clock + Clock + Clock = 9
Ball + Ball + Basket = 4
Basket + Clock + Basket = 7

Clock + BasketBasket + Ball = ?

Answer: 8

Solution:
3*Clock = 9, thus, Clock = 3
2*Basket + 3 = 7, thus, 2*Basket = 4, ergo Basket = 2
2*Ball + 2 = 4, thus, Ball = 1

Substituting values:
3 + 2×2 + 1 = 8

5. You see a boat filled with people. It has not sunk, but when you look again, you don’t see a single person on the boat. Why?

Answer: All the people on the boat are married, so there are no “single” people.

6. Ask this question all day long, but always get completely different answers, and yet all the answers will be correct. What is the question?

Answer: What’s the time?

7. A girl has as many brothers as sisters, but each brother has only half as many brothers as sisters. How many brothers and sisters are there in the family?

Answer: There are 4 sisters and three brothers in the family.

8. Paul’s height is six feet, he’s an assistant at a butcher’s shop, and wears size 9 shoes. What does he weigh?

Answer: Meat. The question is “what” does he weigh, not “how much.”

9. Using only addition, add eight 8s to get the number 1,000.

Answer: 888 + 88 + 8 + 8 + 8 = 1,000. The simplest way to solve this is to get as close to 1,000 as you can (888), and then add as you go along.

10. A is the brother of B. B is the brother of C. C is the father of D. So how is D related to A?

Answer: A is D’s uncle. Try putting names to people instead of letters to make the riddles less tricky than it is.

11. First, think of the color of the clouds. Next, think of the color of snow. Now, think of the color of a bright full moon. Now answer quickly: What do cows drink?

Answer: Water. You might have answered milk, though, because this tricky puzzle gets you to fixate on the color white by answering a series of questions!

12. A farmer says: “I only ever keep sheep, goats and horses. In fact, at the moment they are all sheep bar three, all goats bar four and all horses bar five.” How many does he have of each animal?

Answer: The farmer has three sheep, two goats and one horse. We know there are three animals that are either goats or horses, so let’s assume there are two goats and one horse. Under this assumption, we end up with three sheep, which makes sense because the four non-goats consist of three sheep and one horse.

13. Which word in the dictionary is always spelled incorrectly?

Answer: Incorrectly!
The question is meant to confuse you, so focus on the bottom line instead of getting caught in the word play.

14. If you throw me out of the window, you’ll leave a grieving wife. But drop me in the middle of a door, and you might just save a life. What am I?

Answer: The letter “n.” Removing it from the word window gives you widow, and adding it to the word door, gives you donor.

15. Can you solve this?

Answer: 71-11 = 60
Right now, the equation reads 11 + 11 = 60. Take one matchstick from the addition sign, turning into subtraction and add it to the first digit of the first 11, to make it 71.

16. Anna must choose between two doors, each manned by a guard. One always tells the truth, the other always lies. One door leads to freedom, the other to doom. What question must Anna ask to choose the right door to freedom?

Answer: The question is: “If I were to ask the other guard which door leads to freedom, what would he say?”

If you ask the honest guard, he knows the liar would point to the wrong door, so he tells you that.
If you ask the liar, he knows the honest guard would point to the right door, but he lies and says the guard would point to the wrong one. Either way, the guard you ask will point you to the door of doom.
So, to escape, just pick the opposite door.

17. Solve this mathematical problem without using the calculator: (1 + 2) * (3 + 4) * (5 — 5) = ?

Answer: 0, since 5 — 5 = 0, and multiplying everything by 0 equals 0.

So how many of these were you able to solve? If you liked these riddles, then try your hand at solving more puzzles to make your brain shake off the cobwebs. And if you have some riddles to stump us with, do share them in the comments.