Brain Teaser Riddles for ESL students

Here are some fun brain-teaser riddles. Let us give them a try!

(*Source: https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/riddles-for-esl-students/ & picture source from https://englishteaching101.com/funny-brain-teasers-for-kids/ )  

Riddles for Beginners

   

   1.   How many letters are in the alphabet?

   2.   What has a face and two hands but no arms or legs?

   

   3.   There’s a house. One enters it blind and comes out seeing. What is it?

   

   4.   As I was going to St. Ives,

I met a man with seven wives,

Each wife had seven sacks,

Each sack had seven cats,

Each cat had seven kits:

Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,

How many were there going to St. Ives?





<Answer Keys for Beginner Riddles>

   1.  11  (t-h-e-a-l-p-h-a-b-e-t)

   2.  a clock

   3.  a house

   4.  one

Slightly Hard Riddles

    

   5.   What instrument can you hear but never see?

    6.   What occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment and never in one thousand years?

    7.   Which letter of the alphabet has the most water?

<Answer Keys for Medium level riddles>

    5.  your voice

    6.  the letter  “M”

    7.  C (“sea” )

Difficult Riddles


8. What five-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?



9. What word begins and ends with an E but only has one letter?



10. I am a word. If you pronounce me rightly, it will be wrong. If you pronounce me wrong it is right. What word am I?



<Answer Keys for Difficult Riddles>

    8.  short (Short-er)

    9.  envelope

    10.              wrong

Advanced/ Bookworm levels of Riddles from Literature

11.

“What walks on four feet in the morning,

two in the afternoon,

and three at night?”

– “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles



12.

“This thing all things devours;

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats mountain down.”

– “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien



13.

“Voiceless it cries,

Wingless flutters,

Toothless bites,

Mouthless mutters.”

– “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien



14.

“If you break me, I’ll not stop working.

 If you can touch me, my work is done.

If you lose me, you must find me with a ring soon after. What am I?”

– “Wizard and Glass” by Stephen King



15.

“First think of the person who lives in disguise,

Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies,

Next tell me what’s always the last thing to mend,

The middle of middle and end of the end?

And finally give me the sound often heard,

During the search for a hard-to-find word.

Now string them together, and answer me this,

Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?”

– “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” by J.K. Rowling





<Answer Keys for Advanced Levels of Riddles from Literature>

    11.              man

    12.              time

    13.              wind

    14.              the heart

    15.              spider (spy – d – er)