Riddles About Light

Ten riddles about light at a time: lamps, candles, the sun, shadows and the lights in the sky.

Riddles About Light

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  1. I am a rainbow made at night by moonlight. My light is so faint that to your eyes I usually look white. What am I?
  2. A metal rod stands on the roof for years, waiting for me and hoping I never come. If I do, it leads me down a wire into the ground. What am I?
  3. Rub me, in the old stories, and a genie comes out to grant wishes. Everybody forgets that I was made to hold oil and a flame. What am I?
  4. We lie forgotten in a kitchen drawer for years. The night the power goes out, the whole family comes looking for us. What are we?
  5. If I see my shadow on the second of February, the old saying goes, winter will last six more weeks. Who am I?
  6. We are two bright eyes on the front of a car. We show the driver the road at night, and we can look high or low. What are we?
  7. When I say good night to you, I am saying good morning to somebody on the other side of the world. What am I?
  8. Children draw me as a yellow circle with lines all around, in the top corner of the page. What am I?
  9. I am a string that runs down the middle of a candle. The flame sits on me, and I carry the melted wax up to feed it. What am I?
  10. I hang from the ceiling light in the closet, and I am only a string with a knob on the end. Tug me once for light and once more for dark. What am I?

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How it works

These riddles about light cover what makes it and what blocks it, from a candle's wick to the Moon in Earth's shadow. Under each answer, one line says why it fits.

Read the full guide

Riddles about lamps and candles

Lamps and light bulbs has a switch, a shade, a filament and the light inside the refrigerator. Candles, lanterns and torches runs from a wick to a bonfire.

Sun riddles, shadow riddles and lightning riddles

The sun and daylight has sunrise, noon and the gnomon of a sundial. Shadows and reflections has shadow puppets, a silhouette and a lunar eclipse. Light in the sky has four riddles about lightning, a rainbow and its fainter twin, and a halo around the moon.

  • Read a shadow riddle in a dim room with one lamp on, and let the guessers test the answer on the wall.

Questions and answers

What is an easy riddle about light?

I am the one light in the house that nobody has ever seen switched off. Open the door, and I am already shining on the milk. What am I? The refrigerator light.

What is a good riddle about a shadow?

Turn on a second lamp, and there are two of me. What am I? Your shadow: each light casts a shadow of its own. Three more are answered by a shadow, and one by a shadow puppet.

What is a riddle about the sun?

When I say good night to you, I am saying good morning to somebody on the other side of the world. What am I? The sun, which sets in one place as it rises in another.

What is a riddle about lightning?

I draw a white crack across a dark sky, and it has healed before you can point at it. What am I? Lightning. Another asks which bolt no wrench can turn.

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All 74 riddles

Lamps and light bulbs 16

  • Every hand in the house can find me in the dark without looking. I am the first thing anybody touches in a room at night. What am I? Answer: A light switch. You reach for it on the wall as you walk into the room.
  • I am a switch that does not have to choose between on and off. Turn me a little and the lamp glows low; turn me farther and it shines. What am I? Answer: A dimmer. A dimmer switch sets how bright the light is.
  • I am a thread of wire inside an old-style glass bulb. Electricity heats me until I glow, and my glow is the light. What am I? Answer: The filament. An incandescent bulb makes its light by heating a filament until it glows.
  • I am the lamp's tail, and I end in two metal teeth. Until I bite the wall, the best bulb in the world stays dark. What am I? Answer: The plug. A lamp gets its electricity through the plug on its cord.
  • I am the one light in the house that nobody has ever seen switched off. Open the door, and I am already shining on the milk. What am I? Answer: The refrigerator light. It comes on as the door opens.
  • I hang from the ceiling light in the closet, and I am only a string with a knob on the end. Tug me once for light and once more for dark. What am I? Answer: A pull cord. One pull switches the light on, and the next switches it off.
  • I hang over the dining table with many arms and a light at the end of each one. In a grand house I wear glass drops that sparkle. What am I? Answer: A chandelier. A chandelier hangs from the ceiling and holds many lights on its branches.
  • I live on the back of a phone. I was put there to help with photos, and I am used far more for looking under the couch. What am I? Answer: The phone's flashlight. The camera's flash doubles as a flashlight.
  • I sit beside the bed, and I am the last light in the house to go off. My switch is the one you can reach without sitting up. What am I? Answer: A bedside lamp. It is the lamp you turn off from the pillow.
  • I sit on top of the lamp and do none of the shining. My job is to keep the bare bulb from staring into your eyes. What am I? Answer: A lampshade. The shade softens the light and hides the bulb.
  • I stand on the sidewalk on one tall leg with my eye shut all day. In the evening I switch myself on, and children playing outside know it is time to go home. What am I? Answer: A streetlight. It comes on by itself when the daylight fades.
  • My name is three letters, and you say each one aloud. I am the tiny light on the front of the TV that says it is only asleep. What am I? Answer: An LED. Small LEDs have long been used as indicator lights.
  • Rub me, in the old stories, and a genie comes out to grant wishes. Everybody forgets that I was made to hold oil and a flame. What am I? Answer: A magic lamp. The genie's home in the old tales is an oil lamp.
  • We are two bright eyes on the front of a car. We show the driver the road at night, and we can look high or low. What are we? Answer: Headlights. A car has high beams and low beams.
  • Which bulb goes into the ground and never into a lamp? Answer: A flower bulb. Tulips grow from bulbs planted in the soil.
  • Yesterday I lit the hallway. Today you flip the switch, nothing happens, and somebody goes to fetch a chair. What am I? Answer: A burned-out light bulb. The chair is for reaching the ceiling to change it.

Candles, lanterns and torches 15

  • Blow out the candle, and I rise from the wick: one thin gray ribbon that curls and is gone. What am I? Answer: Smoke. A wick smokes for a moment after the flame goes out.
  • I am a big outdoor fire built for a celebration, with a crowd standing in a ring around me. What am I? Answer: A bonfire. A bonfire is too big to sit close to.
  • I am a flame in a glass coat with a handle on top. The wind cannot blow me out, and you can carry me across the yard. What am I? Answer: A lantern. The glass keeps the wind off the flame.
  • I am a light that flickers and smells faintly of wax. Restaurants use me to make a plain dinner feel like an occasion. What am I? Answer: Candlelight. A few candles on the table change the whole room.
  • I am a small gas flame that waits inside an old gas stove or oven. My one job is to light the big burner. What am I? Answer: A pilot light. A pilot light is a small gas flame that lights a larger burner.
  • I am a small metal cone on the end of a handle. Lower me over a candle, and the flame goes out with no puff of breath. What am I? Answer: A candle snuffer. A snuffer is a small cone on a handle, made for putting candles out.
  • I am a string that runs down the middle of a candle. The flame sits on me, and I carry the melted wax up to feed it. What am I? Answer: The wick. A wick draws the melted wax up to the flame, where it burns.
  • I am the only part of the candle you must never touch, and the only part anybody looks at. What am I? Answer: The flame. The flame is the hot, bright part.
  • I am the smallest candle in the house, short and round in a thin metal cup. I am named for my old job of keeping a teapot warm. What am I? Answer: A tea light. Tea lights take their name from teapot warmers.
  • I have a red head and a thin wooden body, and I live in a box full of twins. I work once, for a few seconds, and then I am finished. What am I? Answer: A match. Strike it once and it is used up.
  • I hold the candle up straight and catch what it drips. I am never lit myself. What am I? Answer: A candlestick. The candle stands in it.
  • In the old stories I wait in an iron ring on the castle wall. An explorer lifts me out and carries me down the dark stairs, burning at my top end. What am I? Answer: A torch. A torch is carried by its unlit end.
  • One more of us stands on the cake every year, until the year somebody gives up and buys two shaped like numbers. What are we? Answer: Birthday candles. One candle for each year soon fills the cake.
  • Under the blanket, long after lights out, I am how a book gets read in secret. What am I? Answer: A flashlight. A small light under the covers wakes nobody.
  • We lie forgotten in a kitchen drawer for years. The night the power goes out, the whole family comes looking for us. What are we? Answer: Candles. Candles need no electricity.

The sun and daylight 15

  • The cat finds me on the carpet every morning and lies down in me. By afternoon I have crept across the room, and the cat has moved with me. What am I? Answer: A patch of sunlight. It moves across the floor as the sun moves across the sky.
  • Children draw me as a yellow circle with lines all around, in the top corner of the page. What am I? Answer: The sun. The lines are its rays.
  • I am a lamp so bright that I light half the world at a time, and so far away that my light needs about eight minutes to reach you. What am I? Answer: The sun. Sunlight takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth.
  • I am a star, and I am the only one you can see in the daytime. What am I? Answer: The sun. The sun is the star at the center of the solar system.
  • I am a window that only ever looks at the sky. I sit in the roof and pour daylight down the stairs. What am I? Answer: A skylight. A skylight is a window set into a roof.
  • I am an egg fried on one side only, with my yellow yolk looking up at you. My name has the sun in it. What am I? Answer: A sunny-side-up egg. The round yolk is the sunny side.
  • I am an umbrella that has never met the rain. I am opened on bright days to carry a little shade around. What am I? Answer: A parasol. A parasol is carried against the sun.
  • I am free every morning, and most people sleep straight through me. For a few minutes the eastern sky turns pink and gold. What am I? Answer: Sunrise. The sun comes up in the east.
  • I am the moment the morning runs out. One minute before me is A.M., and one minute after me is P.M. What am I? Answer: Noon. Twelve o'clock in the day divides morning from afternoon.
  • I am the part that stands up from the face of a sundial. All I do is get in the sun's way, and that is how the time is told. What am I? Answer: The gnomon. The gnomon casts the shadow that falls on the hour lines.
  • I am the red you bring home from the beach when you forget the lotion. I show exactly where your shirt ended. What am I? Answer: A sunburn. Skin that was covered stays its own color.
  • I am the same sun that came up this morning, yet people who slept through that will stop the car to take my picture. What am I? Answer: The sunset. It comes at an hour when everybody is awake.
  • One of us breaks and never falls. The other falls and never breaks. Which two are we? Answer: Day and night. People say that day breaks and night falls.
  • When I say good night to you, I am saying good morning to somebody on the other side of the world. What am I? Answer: The sun. As it sets in one place it rises in another.
  • Which day of the week is the brightest? Answer: Sunday. It has the sun in its name.

Shadows and reflections 16

  • After the rain I lie on the sidewalk and hold a piece of the sky. Step in me, and the sky breaks into rings. What am I? Answer: A puddle. Still water shows whatever is above it.
  • The closer you hold your hand to the lamp, the bigger I grow on the wall. What am I? Answer: The shadow of your hand. A hand near the light blocks more of it.
  • Hook your thumbs together and flap your fingers in front of a lamp, and I fly across the wall. What am I? Answer: A shadow puppet. Two hands make the shadow of a bird.
  • I am a game of tag in which nobody touches anybody. To catch a player, you step on the dark shape at their feet. What am I? Answer: Shadow tag. You tag a player by stepping on their shadow.
  • I am a portrait with no eyes, no mouth and no color: only the outline of a face, filled in black. What am I? Answer: A silhouette. A silhouette shows its subject as one solid shape, usually black.
  • I am a thousand flashes of sun on the lake, and I go out the moment a cloud comes over. What am I? Answer: The sparkle on the water. Each ripple throws back a flash of sunlight.
  • I am the one thing you own that you cannot pick up, cannot wash and cannot leave at home on a sunny day. What am I? Answer: Your shadow. It goes wherever you go in the light.
  • I boil water for tea, and in my shiny side you can see the whole kitchen, bent, with your own stretched face in the middle. What am I? Answer: A kettle. A curved, polished side works as a funhouse mirror.
  • I hang over the dance floor, covered in tiny mirrors, and I throw spots of light around the room as I turn. What am I? Answer: A mirror ball. Every little mirror sends off a spot of light.
  • I have no bulb and no battery. I shine red on the back of a bicycle only when a car's headlights find me. What am I? Answer: A reflector. It sends the headlights' own light back to the driver.
  • If I see my shadow on the second of February, the old saying goes, winter will last six more weeks. Who am I? Answer: The groundhog. That is the tradition of Groundhog Day.
  • Jump, and for one moment I let go of your feet. What am I? Answer: Your shadow. In the air, you and your shadow come apart.
  • Look into my tube and turn me. Mirrors inside repeat a few loose bits of colored glass into a pattern, and the pattern changes with every turn. What am I? Answer: A kaleidoscope. Its mirrors repeat the loose pieces into a pattern with symmetry.
  • On my night the Moon slides into Earth's shadow and turns orange or red. What am I? Answer: A lunar eclipse. In a lunar eclipse the Moon passes through Earth's shadow.
  • Turn on a second lamp, and there are two of me. What am I? Answer: Your shadow. Each light casts a shadow of its own.
  • What an echo does for a shout, I do for a beam of light: I send it back. What am I? Answer: A reflection. Light bounces off a mirror as sound bounces off a wall.

Light in the sky 12

  • A metal rod stands on the roof for years, waiting for me and hoping I never come. If I do, it leads me down a wire into the ground. What am I? Answer: Lightning. A lightning rod takes the strike and carries it to the ground.
  • At night you can tell me from a star: I move, and I carry a red light on my left wingtip and a green light on my right. What am I? Answer: An airplane. An aircraft carries a red light on the left wingtip and a green one on the right.
  • I am a pale ring around the moon. Ice crystals high in the air make me. What am I? Answer: A halo. A halo forms when light passes through ice crystals in the air.
  • I am a rainbow made at night by moonlight. My light is so faint that to your eyes I usually look white. What am I? Answer: A moonbow. A moonbow is a rainbow made by moonlight, and it often looks white.
  • I am lightning too far away to hear. At night a cloud on the horizon flickers, and no thunder ever arrives. What am I? Answer: Heat lightning. That is the name for lightning that can be seen from a great distance but not heard; a far-off flash inside a cloud is also called sheet lightning.
  • I am the fainter twin that sometimes arches outside the first rainbow, and I wear the same colors in the opposite order. What am I? Answer: The second bow of a double rainbow. The outer bow is fainter, and its colors are reversed.
  • I am the glow that hangs in the night sky over a city, made by the city's own lamps. What am I? Answer: Skyglow. Skyglow is the brightening of the night sky, mostly by artificial light.
  • I am the reason a clear night with a full moon needs no flashlight. What am I? Answer: Moonlight. A full moon lights the path.
  • I draw a white crack across a dark sky, and it has healed before you can point at it. What am I? Answer: Lightning. A flash of lightning lasts only an instant.
  • Sunlight sets out with every color in it, and the air scatters the blue far more than the red. That is why I look the way I do on a clear day. What am I? Answer: The blue sky. Air scatters blue light more strongly than red, so the sky looks blue.
  • Turn your back on the sun to find me. After the rain, I am always in the part of the sky across from it. What am I? Answer: A rainbow. A rainbow made by sunlight appears in the part of the sky opposite the sun.
  • Which bolt can no wrench turn? Answer: A lightning bolt. A bolt is a fastener, and it is also a flash of lightning.