Free printable
Printable riddle sheet — Ages 10–12
20 riddles, ready to print — with the answer key on its own page.
Ages 10–12 — Brain Champs riddle sheet
20 riddles · write your guess on the line, then check the answer key at the end.
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1. A farmer has 17 sheep, and all but 9 run away. How many sheep does the farmer have left? (Wordplay)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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2. Two fathers and two sons go fishing together. Each of them catches exactly one fish, but they only bring home 3 fish in total. How is that possible? (Logic Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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3. What comes once in a minute, twice in every moment, but never once in a thousand years? (Wordplay)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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4. I am an odd number. Take away just one letter from my name, and I become even. What number am I? (Wordplay)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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5. It's 3:15 on a clock. What is the angle between the hour hand and the minute hand, in degrees? (Math Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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6. You spot a boat full of people out on the lake, yet you can honestly say there isn't a single person on board. How can that be? (Wordplay)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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7. You have two ropes and a lighter. Each rope takes exactly 60 minutes to burn all the way through, but they burn unevenly — some parts fast, some parts slow. How can you measure exactly 45 minutes? (Logic Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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8. I am a three-digit number. My tens digit is five more than my ones digit, and my hundreds digit is eight less than my tens digit. What number am I? (Math Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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9. What five-letter word becomes shorter every time you add two letters to it? (Wordplay)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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10. A man is looking at a photograph and says: "I have no brothers and no sisters, but this man's father is my father's son." Whose photo is he looking at? (Logic Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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11. Using only the digit 8 and the plus sign, how can you add together eight 8s to make exactly 1,000? (Math Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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12. Here's a word puzzle: the first two letters name a male, the first three letters name a female, the first four letters name a great person, and the whole word names a great woman. What's the word? (Wordplay)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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13. A red house is built from red bricks. A blue house is built from blue bricks. A pink house is built from pink bricks. What is a greenhouse built from? (Logic Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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14. Pick any number. Double it, add 10, divide the result by 2, then subtract your original number. No matter what number you start with, you'll always end up with the same answer. What is it? (Math Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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15. You're standing inside a one-story house where absolutely everything is pink — the walls, the furniture, even the curtains. What color are the stairs? (Logic Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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16. A man is pushing his car when he stops at a hotel — and suddenly realizes he's bankrupt. What's going on? (Logic Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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17. A girl says she is 10 years old, but she has only celebrated 2 birthdays. How is that possible? (Logic Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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18. What can you hold in your left hand, but never in your right hand? (Logic Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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19. Which is heavier: a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks? (Logic Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
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20. Can you find three positive whole numbers where adding them together gives you the exact same result as multiplying them together? (Math Puzzle)
My guess: ______________________________________________
Answer key — Ages 10–12
- 1. 9 — "All but 9 ran away" means 9 stayed behind.
- 2. There are only three people: a grandfather, his son, and his son's son. — The middle person is both a father and a son at the same time.
- 3. The letter M
- 4. Seven — Remove the 's' from "seven" and it spells "even."
- 5. 7.5 degrees — The minute hand sits at 90°; the hour hand has moved a quarter of the way from 3 to 4, landing at 97.5°.
- 6. Everyone on the boat is married — Nobody on board is "single."
- 7. Light one rope at both ends and the other rope at one end, all at the same time. The first rope finishes in 30 minutes (the two flames meet in the middle). The instant it finishes, light the second rope's other end too — now it burns from both ends and finishes in the remaining 15 minutes. — 30 minutes + 15 minutes = 45 minutes total.
- 8. 194 — Ones = 4, tens = 4 + 5 = 9, hundreds = 9 − 8 = 1.
- 9. Short — Add "er" and it becomes "shorter."
- 10. His own son's photo — "My father's son," with no siblings, can only mean himself — so the man in the photo is his son.
- 11. 888 + 88 + 8 + 8 + 8 = 1,000
- 12. Heroine — HE, HER, HERO, HEROINE.
- 13. Glass — A greenhouse is made of glass, not green bricks — it's a trick of the pattern.
- 14. 5 — The math always simplifies to 5, no matter which number you start with.
- 15. There are no stairs — It's a one-story house.
- 16. He's playing the board game Monopoly — The car is his game piece, and he landed on a hotel he couldn't afford to pay rent on.
- 17. She was born on February 29th — A leap day only comes around once every four years.
- 18. Your right hand
- 19. Neither — they weigh exactly the same — One pound is one pound; the bricks just take up a lot less space.
- 20. 1, 2, and 3 — 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, and 1 × 2 × 3 = 6.