Game Night Riddles: 30 Riddles for Family Game Night

I’m a little cube with dots on every side, from one to six. Shake me, roll me, and I’ll tell you how far to move. What am I?

I have 52 members, split into four families: hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. Shuffle me, then deal me out. What am I?

I come in a box with hundreds of oddly shaped pieces, and the picture on my lid shows what I’ll look like when I’m finished. What am I?

I have two glass bulbs and a skinny waist. Flip me over, and when all my sand falls to the bottom, your turn is over. What am I?

I’m an arrow on a circle of colors or numbers. Flick me, and I whirl around and around until I stop and point to your move. What am I?

In this game, you can’t say a word. You act out a movie, a book or an animal while everyone else shouts out guesses. What game is it?

I’m a sheet of paper or a little pad where every point, round and win gets written down. At the end of the night, I show who’s the champion. What am I?

I’m a game played on a board of 64 squares with 12 round, flat pieces on each side. You hop over your opponent’s pieces to capture them. What game am I?

We’re black rectangles with white dots, and each of us has two halves. Match our ends to build a long chain across the table, or stand us in a line and knock the first one over. What are we?

I’m a game for two that you can play with just a pencil and paper. Draw a grid of nine squares, then take turns drawing X’s and O’s until someone gets three in a row. What game am I?

I’m the chess piece shaped like a horse’s head. I move in an L shape, and I’m the only piece that can jump over others. What am I?

There are eight of me on each side, lined up in the front row of the chessboard. I move straight forward but capture diagonally. If I reach the far side, I can turn into a more powerful piece. What am I?

I’m the most powerful piece in chess. I can move as far as I like in any straight line: forward, backward, sideways or diagonally. What am I?

I stand in the corners of the chessboard at the start of the game, and I look like a little castle tower. I move in straight lines, up, down and sideways. What am I?

In checkers, when one of your pieces makes it all the way to the other side of the board, another piece is stacked on top of it, and now it can move backward too. What does it become?

I’m a card with just one big symbol in the middle. In some games I’m the lowest card in the deck, and in others I’m the highest. What am I?

I’m the card that doesn’t belong to any of the four suits. I often wear a jester’s hat, and in some games I can stand in for any other card. What am I?

I’m what you do to a deck of cards before you deal, mixing them up so nobody knows what’s coming. What am I?

I’m a game played with just your hands. A fist, a flat hand or two fingers: each one beats one of the others and loses to the third. What game am I?

In this game, one player thinks of something, and everyone else gets to ask questions that can only be answered “yes” or “no.” You have a limited number of questions to figure it out. What game is it?

Look closely at a die. The little dots on it have their own special name, and the numbers on opposite sides always add up to the same total. What are the dots called?

I’m the move that ends a chess game. The king is under attack and has no way to escape. What am I called?

The game is over, the scores are counted, and the two teams have exactly the same number of points. What do you call it?

I’m a card game you play all by yourself. You lay the cards out in rows and try to sort them all into piles by suit. What game am I?

I’m the player who hands out the cards at the start of each round. In many games, this job passes to the next player after every hand. Who am I?

Players read me before the game starts, argue about me halfway through, and look me up again when someone says, “That’s not fair!” What am I?

I’m flat and folded in half inside a box, and I open up to show squares, paths and spaces for every player’s piece. What am I?

I’m a little game piece: a plastic person, a colored disc or a tiny object. I stand for you on the board and move when it’s your turn. What am I?

In this game, everyone sits in a line or circle. The first person whispers a sentence to the next, and it travels all the way around. By the end, it has usually turned into something silly. What game is it?

The first jigsaw puzzles, made in the 1760s, weren’t pictures of animals or castles. They were cut up to help children learn geography. What were they pictures of?