Riddles with yes or no questions are strange stories with an ordinary explanation. One player reads the solution in secret, and the others ask yes or no questions until they can tell it. This deck has 60, with hints.
How to host a yes or no riddle
Read the card out, then press Show solution and keep the phone to yourself. The room asks questions, and you answer yes, no or "it doesn't matter". If they stall, read out the hint printed after the solution. The riddle is solved when somebody tells the whole story, not just one fact. Press Next question and hand the phone to the solver.
The Gentle set and the three levels
Gentle (for families) holds 20 riddles about pets, parties and school buses, all Easy or Medium. Easy riddles hide one everyday twist. Medium ones turn on a job, a sport or a place. Hard ones need a fact about clocks, calendars or travel, such as how a flight can land before it took off.
Tips
Open wide: Is it a person? Is it indoors? Is somebody doing a job?
When a question rests on a wrong guess, say so before the room builds ten more on it.
For a harder game, allow twenty questions and keep count on paper.
Questions and answers
What are riddles with yes or no questions called?
They are called situation puzzles, and also lateral thinking puzzles, minute mysteries or yes/no puzzles. A host describes an odd scene and knows the story behind it. The solvers rebuild that story using only questions the host can answer with yes or no.
What do you say when the answer is neither yes nor no?
Say "it doesn't matter". Hosts of these puzzles work with three answers: yes, no and irrelevant. When a question is built on a wrong guess, say that too, or the room spends ten questions on a man named Rex who is really a dog.
Can kids play yes or no riddles?
Yes, with the Gentle (for families) set: 20 riddles about birthday candles, ducklings, school buses and a snowman in July. Nobody gets hurt in any of the 60 stories on this page. Let a grown-up host the first few, then pass the phone.
How do you write your own yes or no riddle?
Start from the ordinary explanation and hide one fact. Pick a job, a game or a place, describe only what a stranger would see, and leave out the detail that makes it normal. Try it on one person before you try it on a room.
A family sleeps in a tent all night. In the morning they walk twenty steps and make breakfast in their own kitchen.Solution: They camped in their own backyard. Hint: they never left home.
A mail carrier brings letters to forty homes every day and never sets foot on a road.Solution: The homes stand around a lake, and she delivers the mail by boat, dock to dock. Hint: she does not walk, drive or fly.
A man in a bright vest waves two glowing sticks at night, and two hundred people roll to a stop in front of him.Solution: He guides planes on the ground at an airport. The two hundred people are on the jet he is waving into its parking spot. Hint: the people cannot see him, but their driver can.
A man stands with his back to the audience for two hours and never plays a note. At the end he takes the first bow.Solution: He is the conductor of the orchestra. Hint: he holds a small stick.
A piano in a hotel lobby plays a whole song. The keys really move, and nobody is sitting at it.Solution: It is a player piano, which plays itself from a paper roll full of holes or, on newer ones, a digital file. Hint: the piano was built to do this.
A silver statue in the town square winks at a little girl. Her parents see it happen and are not surprised.Solution: The statue is a street performer in silver paint who stands still until somebody comes close. Hint: the statue goes home in the evening.
A woman roars at the top of her voice in the public library. The librarian thanks her for it.Solution: She is reading a picture book aloud at children's story time, and the roar belongs to the dragon. Hint: she has an audience, and most of it is under six.
A woman tells two hundred strangers to sit down, buckle up and put their bags away. Every one of them does it.Solution: She is a flight attendant, and the plane is about to take off. Hint: they are all going to the same place.
At a party a girl unwraps a present, finds another wrapped present inside and hands it to the boy beside her. She is not upset.Solution: They are playing pass the parcel. When the music stops you take off one layer, and then the parcel moves on. Hint: there is music, and it keeps stopping.
Ava gets a blank sheet of paper in the mail. She holds it near a warm lamp, reads it and laughs.Solution: Her cousin wrote the letter in lemon juice. It dries clear, and the heat of the lamp turns the writing brown. Hint: the page was never really blank.
Eight pedestrians cross Main Street in a line without looking either way. Every driver stops, and one takes a photo.Solution: The pedestrians are a mother duck and her seven ducklings. Hint: none of the eight is a person.
Every afternoon at three Rex runs to the window and shouts at the same man. The man waves and comes back the next day.Solution: Rex is a dog, and the man is the mail carrier on his daily round. Hint: ask what kind of shouting it is.
Every weekday at eight a man steps in front of moving cars holding only a sign. The drivers stop, and parents thank him.Solution: He is a school crossing guard. Hint: the sign says STOP.
Leo puts out a fire on the dining table with one breath while his whole family watches. Everyone claps.Solution: The fire is the candles on his birthday cake. Hint: the fire is very small, and somebody lit it on purpose.
Lucas builds a snowman in his backyard in July, and nothing about the weather is unusual.Solution: He lives in the Southern Hemisphere, where July is a winter month. Hint: ask where his backyard is.
Omar goes whale watching and sees six whales. He cannot swim, and he never gets on a boat.Solution: He watched from a cliff on the shore. On some coasts whales pass close enough to see from land. Hint: he brought binoculars and a folding chair.
On vacation Lia spends a whole day building something beautiful. She knows it will be gone by morning, and she is not sad.Solution: She built a sandcastle on the beach below the high tide line, and the sea washes it away overnight. Hint: she used a bucket and a shovel.
Thirty people get on a bus at a dozen different stops. All thirty get off at the same stop, and nobody planned it together.Solution: It is a school bus, and the last stop is the school. Hint: every rider is under twelve.
Twenty people stand silent in a dark living room. A key turns in the lock, and all of them shout at once.Solution: It is a surprise birthday party, and the guest of honor has just come home. Hint: they are all friends of the person with the key.
Two teams pull as hard as they can in opposite directions. The team that ends up walking backward wins.Solution: It is a tug of war, and the winners drag the rope and the other team toward their own side. Hint: both teams hold the same rope.
At home 10
Carl orders a large pizza and pays for it. It never comes to his door, and he is pleased about that.Solution: He ordered it as a surprise for his daughter, and it was delivered to her place across town. Hint: the pizza did arrive somewhere.
Dev runs as fast as he can for thirty minutes and finishes in exactly the spot where he started. He never turned around.Solution: He was running on a treadmill. Hint: the ground moved and he did not.
Every morning water pours onto the floor of one room in the house. Nobody mops it up, and nothing is ever damaged.Solution: The room is the bathroom and the water comes from the shower. It runs away down the drain in the floor. Hint: somebody turns the water on, on purpose.
The floors in Jo's house get vacuumed every day. Jo has never pushed a vacuum, and nobody else lives in or visits the house.Solution: Jo owns a robot vacuum that runs by itself on a schedule. Hint: nobody pushes it at all.
Four friends sit at a table. One of them buys a hotel in under a minute and pays in cash, and the other three groan.Solution: They are playing a board game about property. The hotel is a plastic piece, and the cash is play money. Hint: the money is not real.
The Lees hear their doorbell at seven every morning. Nobody is ever at the door, and nothing is wrong with the bell.Solution: Their pet parrot has learned to copy the sound of the doorbell. Hint: the sound does not come from the door.
Lena phones her brother and says good morning. He answers good night, and both of them are right.Solution: They live in time zones half a world apart. It is breakfast time for Lena and bedtime for him. Hint: ask where each of them is.
On the day Mr. Ito turned 80, he was having only the 20th real birthday of his life.Solution: He was born on February 29, a date that turns up only in a leap year. Hint: ask about the date, not the man.
Ruth's alarm rings at six as always, and she leaves home at her usual time. She gets to work an hour before everyone else.Solution: The clocks went back one hour overnight for the end of daylight saving time, and her old alarm clock did not change itself. Hint: every other clock in town says something different.
Two sisters have the same mother and were born ten minutes apart, yet their birthdays fall in different years.Solution: They are twins. One was born a few minutes before midnight on December 31 and the other a few minutes after. Hint: ask what time of day they were born.
Around town 10
A man collapses in front of five hundred people. Nobody goes to help him, and a minute later they all clap.Solution: He is an actor in a play, and the fall is in the script. Hint: he does the same thing again tomorrow night.
A man gives a ten-minute toast at a wedding. No guest hears a word of it, and every guest laughs in the right places.Solution: He gives the toast in sign language. The couple and most of their guests are deaf. Hint: he did not use his voice.
A man reads out letters and numbers to a quiet hall. A woman jumps up and shouts one word, and he hands her a prize.Solution: He is a bingo caller, and she has just filled a line on her card. Hint: everybody in the hall has a card and a marker.
A stranger gets into Nina's car and drives it away while she stands and watches. She smiles and goes in to dinner.Solution: He is the valet at the restaurant, and he is parking the car for her. Hint: she handed him the keys herself.
At ten in the morning every student walks out of the school at once. The principal watches and checks her watch.Solution: It is a fire drill, and she is timing how fast the building empties. Hint: they all walk back in ten minutes later.
Gus puts four coins into a machine on the street. Nothing comes out, and he walks away satisfied.Solution: The machine is a parking meter, and the coins paid for an hour of parking. Hint: he arrived by car.
Hal scratches his ear at the wrong moment and goes home as the owner of a grandfather clock.Solution: He was at an auction, and the auctioneer took his raised hand as a bid. Hint: a man at the front of the room was talking very fast.
Six friends pay to be shut in a room. They have one hour to get out, and they come out smiling.Solution: It is an escape room, a game where a team solves puzzles against the clock to find the way out. Hint: the room is full of clues.
Tara leaves the grocery store with a full cart and never goes near a checkout. A clerk helps her load the car.Solution: She ordered and paid online, and she came only to pick the order up. Hint: she did pay, just not in the store.
Two friends sit in a parked car for two hours with the engine off, facing straight ahead. They call it a great night out.Solution: They are at a drive-in movie theater, watching the film through the windshield. Hint: many other cars are parked the same way.
At work 10
A director sits in the back row and watches strangers watch her movie, months before it opens.Solution: It is a test screening. The studio shows an early cut to an invited audience and asks what they think. Hint: the audience fills in a form at the end.
A man gets into a bank's computers at night and takes nothing. In the morning the bank pays him.Solution: The bank hired him to test its security. He attacks the system with permission and reports the weak spots. Hint: the bank knew he would try.
A man sits alone in a small room and talks for three hours. Thousands of people hear every word, and nobody answers him.Solution: He hosts a radio show. Hint: he wears headphones and sits at a microphone.
A man waters the plant by his desk every Monday for a year. Then a coworker tells him one thing about it, and he turns red.Solution: The plant is plastic. Hint: the plant has never grown or dropped a leaf.
A pilot crashes twice before lunch. Nobody is hurt, nothing is broken, and she flies passengers the next day.Solution: She was training in a flight simulator. Hint: she never left the ground.
A woman types every word spoken in the room for six hours. She never adds a word of her own.Solution: She is a court reporter, and her record of the trial has to be word for word. Hint: a judge is in the room.
A woman walks on the spot in a tray of gravel while she watches a movie scene. It is her job.Solution: She is a Foley artist. She records the footsteps and other everyday sounds that are added to a film after shooting. Hint: a microphone is pointed at her shoes.
Rosa lies back in a chair while a masked man takes something of hers that she will never get back. She pays him.Solution: He is her dentist, and he has pulled out a bad tooth. Hint: she made an appointment for it.
Tom is paid to spend the night asleep at a workplace. The people who watch him are pleased when he sleeps well.Solution: He is taking part in a sleep study, and the staff in the next room are recording how he sleeps. Hint: he has wires taped to his head.
Two leaders talk for an hour. Neither understands a word the other says, and the meeting goes well.Solution: An interpreter sits between them and repeats everything in the other language. Hint: there is a third person at the table.
Outdoors and travel 10
A flight takes off at 9:00 in the morning and lands at 8:45 the same morning. The clocks at both airports are right.Solution: It was a short flight west across a time zone line, so the clocks where it landed are one hour behind. Hint: the flight lasted 45 minutes.
A man reads outdoors at midnight with no lamp.Solution: He is north of the Arctic Circle in summer, where the sun stays up all night. Hint: ask where he is and what month it is.
A sailor goes to sleep on Tuesday night, sleeps eight hours and wakes up on Tuesday morning.Solution: His ship crossed the International Date Line heading east during the night, so the date went back one day. Hint: he is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
A woman steps out of a plane in the sky with no parachute on her back. She lands softly and wants to go again.Solution: It is a tandem skydive. She is strapped to an instructor, and the instructor wears the parachute for both of them. Hint: she does not jump alone.
At noon on a clear day the whole town goes dark for two minutes. People stand in the street and cheer.Solution: A total solar eclipse is passing over the town. The moon covers the sun for a couple of minutes. Hint: everybody knew the date years ahead.
In January Erik drives his truck to the middle of the lake, parks it and goes fishing.Solution: The lake is frozen solid, and he is ice fishing through a hole he cut. Hint: ask about the weather.
Kim wins a race sitting down and facing backward the whole way.Solution: It is a rowing race. Rowers sit with their backs to the finish line. Hint: the race is on water.
Maya ends the tournament with the lowest score of any player, and she takes home the trophy.Solution: The sport is golf, where the player who needs the fewest strokes wins. Hint: in this sport you count every swing.
Priya hits a wall forty times in one hour, and her coach is delighted.Solution: She is a swimmer training in a pool. She touches the wall at the end of every length. Hint: she is wet the whole time.
Sara boards the right train at the right time, as she does every day. Today it takes her to the wrong city.Solution: The train splits in two at a junction, and each half goes to a different city. Today she sat in the wrong half. Hint: the train that arrived was shorter than the train that left.
How this list was compiled
Own work: 60 situation riddles (a strange scene with an ordinary explanation), each with its solution in x.a and a hint for the host in d, written for this page on 2026-09-20. No story is taken from a riddle book, a website or the examples in the encyclopedia article, and none involves a death, a weapon or an injury. Rules of play (a host who knows the story, solvers who ask yes or no questions, the answers yes, no and irrelevant, hints allowed, solved when a solver tells the host's story) checked against https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_puzzle on 2026-09-20. Where a solution rests on how something in the world works (clocks going back, July in the Southern Hemisphere, the midnight sun, lemon juice ink, the date line, a dividing train and so on), the detail was checked on 2026-09-20 against the English Wikipedia article named in that item's x.src, read as plain text through the MediaWiki API; 34 items carry one. Levels: easy has one everyday twist that a child knows (a pet, a game, a birthday); medium turns on a job, a sport or a place the solvers must name; hard needs a fact about clocks, calendars or travel, or a line of work few people have met. The 20 cards also tagged family are easy or medium and stay with scenes a six-year-old knows. Cards run longer than the 90 characters the site style asks of a spoken card, because a riddle is a short story: every scenario and solution is 160 characters or fewer, the length the deck checks. Checked by script on 2026-09-20 against every other dataset on this site for shared cards. Licence: own work