Printer Riddles: 30 Riddles About Printers, Ink and Paper (with Answers)

I take the words and pictures from your screen and put them on paper you can hold. What am I?

I started life as part of a tree. Now I’m thin, white and flat, and a printer pulls me through one sheet at a time. What am I?

The printer stops, a red light blinks, and a crumpled sheet is stuck deep inside. What happened?

Lay a drawing face down on my glass, close my lid, and a bright light slides underneath. A moment later, your drawing is on the computer. What am I?

Put one page on my glass, press the button, and I give you as many twins of it as you like. What am I?

I’m a drawer that holds a stack of blank sheets, waiting their turn to be printed. What am I?

I’m a small box that snaps into a printer, full of the colors it sprays onto the page. When I run dry, you have to replace me. What am I?

I’m the printer’s opposite. Feed me a sheet you don’t need anymore, and I cut it into tiny strips. What am I?

Press two keys together, Ctrl and one letter, and the print window pops up. Which letter is it?

Why did the printer get invited to every party?

I’m not a liquid, I’m a fine powder. Laser printers use me instead of ink. What am I?

My printhead sprays tiny drops of ink, thousands of them every second, through holes thinner than a hair. What kind of printer am I?

A beam of light draws the page on a spinning drum, and powder sticks wherever it touched. What kind of printer am I?

I’m a pack of exactly 500 sheets of paper, wrapped up and ready for the printer. What am I called?

I’m what fills a printer’s cartridge. Put an S in front of me, and I’m where you wash the dishes. What am I?

I’m a print setting with a name borrowed from art. I turn the page sideways, so it’s wider than it is tall. What am I?

I’m the blank border all the way around a printed page. Teachers sometimes write notes in me. What am I?

On a screen I’m “soft.” Once you print me on paper, I’m called something else. What am I?

I print shop receipts without a single drop of ink. My paper changes color when it gets hot. What kind of printer am I?

I’m an older machine that scans a page, sends it through a phone line and prints it out on the other side. What am I?

Too many people pressed Print at once, so the jobs have to wait their turn, one after another. What is that line called?

A color printer makes every shade from just four inks: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. What are they called, by their first letters?

In CMYK, black is the only color that doesn’t use its own first letter. What does the K stand for?

I’m a setting that saves paper by printing on the front and the back of each sheet. What am I?

I’m three letters that tell you how sharp a print is: how many tiny dots fit in a line one inch long. What am I?

Pages from a laser printer come out warm. Which part of the printer heats them up, and why?

Before the fuser melts it, what makes the toner powder stick to the right spots on the page?

I don’t print on paper at all. I build solid objects one thin layer at a time, usually out of melted plastic. What am I?

In the 1400s, a German goldsmith built me with movable metal letters, so books could be made fast instead of copied by hand. What am I?

You print 3 copies of a 10-page report, and I make sure you get pages 1 to 10, then 1 to 10 again, instead of three page 1s in a row. What is this setting called?