Trick Questions: 30 Tricky Questions with Answers for Teens on Riddlepedia
Funny & Tricky

Trick Questions: 30 Tricky Questions with Answers for Teens

30 riddles · tap Hint or Answer to reveal

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A trick question is designed to make you answer too fast. It leans on an assumption you didn’t know you were making: that every word means what it usually means, that the story has the people you picture, or that a number is just a number. Slow down and read it again, and the trick is usually sitting in plain sight.

These 30 trick questions are aimed at teens and adults, and they get harder as you go: quick wordplay first, then hidden words and spelling tricks, then lateral-thinking stumpers that need a real “aha.” They’re great for group chats, sleepovers and the five minutes before class. Each one has a hint, and the answers explain the trick.

Easy Trick Questions

How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?

Hint
Check who’s in the story.
Answer
None. It was Noah who built the ark, not Moses.

A red house is made of red bricks, and a blue house is made of blue bricks. What is a greenhouse made of?

Hint
A greenhouse isn’t a house that’s painted green.
Answer
Glass

Say “silk” out loud five times, fast. Now, what do cows drink?

Hint
Your brain is primed to say the wrong word.
Answer
Water. Cows make milk; they drink water.

What has 13 hearts but no other organs?

Hint
You’d shuffle it before a game.
Answer
A deck of cards. Each of the 13 cards in the hearts suit has hearts on it.

If two’s company and three’s a crowd, what are four and five?

Hint
Don’t think about people.
Answer
Nine. 4 + 5 = 9.

How many letters are in “the alphabet”?

Hint
Count the letters in the words, not the alphabet itself.
Answer
  1. T-H-E has 3 letters and A-L-P-H-A-B-E-T has 8.

What has a head and a tail but no body?

Hint
You might flip it to decide who goes first.
Answer
A coin

What kind of room has no doors, no windows and no walls?

Hint
It grows in the forest after it rains.
Answer
A mushroom

Can you spell “hard water” using just three letters?

Hint
Water gets hard when it’s very cold.
Answer
ICE

What is always coming but never actually arrives?

Hint
When it gets here, it has a different name.
Answer
Tomorrow. Once it arrives, it’s called today.

Medium Trick Questions

Before Mount Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain on Earth?

Hint
Did the mountain change when people found it?
Answer
Mount Everest. It was the highest mountain even before anyone measured it.

How can someone go eight days without sleep?

Hint
Nobody said they stayed awake.
Answer
They sleep at night. Going eight days “without sleep” in the daytime is easy.

A plane crashes exactly on the border between two countries. In which country do they bury the survivors?

Hint
Read the last word again.
Answer
Nowhere. You don’t bury survivors.

Is it legal for a man to marry his widow’s sister?

Hint
What does it mean if a woman is his widow?
Answer
No, because he’d be dead. A widow is a woman whose husband has died.

What English word has three double letters in a row?

Hint
It’s a job: someone who keeps track of money in a ledger.
Answer
Bookkeeper. b-OO-KK-EE-per.

What seven-letter word holds hundreds of letters?

Hint
The other kind of letter: the kind with a stamp.
Answer
Mailbox

What five-letter word sounds exactly the same after you take away the last four letters?

Hint
You stand in one at the store.
Answer
Queue. Take away U-E-U-E and you’re left with Q, which sounds the same.

What word starts with IS, ends with AND, and has LA in the middle?

Hint
Just read the letters in order.
Answer
Island. IS + LA + ND.

What has an end but no beginning, a home but no family, and a space but no room?

Hint
You’re probably near one right now.
Answer
A keyboard. It has End, Home and Space keys.

Which word is the odd one out: kayak, level, radar, robot, rotor?

Hint
Read each word backward.
Answer
Robot. All the others are palindromes and read the same backward.

Tricky Trick Questions

A man builds a house with four walls, and every wall faces south. A bear walks past the house. What color is the bear?

Hint
Where on Earth could every wall face south?
Answer
White. The house is at the North Pole, where every direction is south, so the bear is a polar bear.

A woman shoots her husband, then holds him under water for five minutes. Finally, she hangs him up. An hour later, they go out to dinner together. How?

Hint
Think about a darkroom.
Answer
She’s a photographer. She took his photo, developed it in water and hung it up to dry.

A man points at a portrait and says, “Brothers and sisters I have none, but that man’s father is my father’s son.” Who is in the portrait?

Hint
“My father’s son” is a fancy way of saying someone very close.
Answer
His son. With no brothers, “my father’s son” is the man himself, so the man in the portrait is his son.

What letter comes next: O, T, T, F, F, S, S, E, …?

Hint
Start counting out loud.
Answer
N (for nine). They are the first letters of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and next is nine.

What word looks exactly the same when you write it in capital letters and turn the page upside down?

Hint
It’s what fish do all day.
Answer
SWIMS. Upside down, each W becomes an M and the M becomes a W, and the order flips, so it still reads SWIMS.

It’s black when you buy it, red when you use it, and gray when you throw it away. What is it?

Hint
It’s for cooking outside.
Answer
Charcoal

Turn me on my side and I’m everything. Cut me in half and I’m nothing. What am I?

Hint
I’m a number.
Answer
  1. On its side it’s the infinity sign, ∞. Cut it in half across the middle and you get two 0s.

Which is correct: “Nine and five is thirteen” or “Nine and five are thirteen”?

Hint
Check the math, not the grammar.
Answer
Neither. Nine and five make 14.

What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?

Hint
Look at the letters.
Answer
The letter M

What do the numbers 11, 88 and 96 have in common?

Hint
Turn your screen around.
Answer
They look the same upside down. Turn 96 around and the 9 and 6 swap places, so it’s still 96.

How to Use These Trick Questions

  • Group chat challenge: post one trick question a day, and nobody can answer until everyone has replied in a private message to the host. Then reveal who fell for it.
  • Sleepover elimination: go around the circle. Answer wrong and you’re out, but you get to read the next question. The last person standing picks the snacks.
  • Classroom warm-up: a teacher can use the medium round to talk about how words work: double letters, silent letters and palindromes. Ask students to invent one new trick question using the same idea.
  • Fair-play rule: a trick question should feel fair once you hear the answer. If your friends groan, it worked. If they argue, check the wording and try again.

Want more? Try our riddles for teens, these hard riddles or our opposite riddles.