Building Riddles
📋 What it is
A great riddle is fair (solvable from its clues) yet misdirecting (it leads you to assume wrong).
🗣️ Coach says
Writing a riddle teaches you how they work. A good one is FAIR — all the clues are there — but MISDIRECTS by inviting a wrong assumption. Building your own makes you far better at solving others’.
🧠 Memory hook
A great riddle is fair + misdirecting. Build one to learn how they trick you.
😲 Whoa!
Tolkien’s riddle game in The Hobbit is famous because each riddle is perfectly fair — the answer is always hidden in plain sight in the clues.
✅ Quick check: What makes a riddle FAIR rather than just tricky?
Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.
All the information needed is in the clues — you could deduce it; an unfair riddle needs a fact you couldn’t know.
Fairness means the answer is derivable from the given clues.
🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)
Write your own riddle for a real object. Test it on someone — is it fair (solvable) and misdirecting?