Collection · 15 riddles
Christmas Eve brings everyone together. These original situation puzzles begin with that familiar gathering and take it somewhere less comfortable. You can read them here throughout the year. The rules.
15 riddles
Christmas Eve · ★★☆
A capon sits out on the worktop for six hours before it goes in the oven. On Christmas morning nine of the 12 who ate it are doubled up. The bird is innocent and so is the butcher. The person who made them ill did not eat there, and was not in the house five minutes. What happened?
Christmas Eve · ★☆☆
Eight in the evening on Christmas Eve. The goose is in the oven, the oven is on, and the door will not open. Nothing is jammed against it, the oven is not broken, and the power has not gone off. Nobody will get it open for hours, and there will be no goose tonight. What happened?
Christmas Eve · ★★☆
A grandmother hands her four grandchildren their presents, and all four unwrap at once. Each of them kisses her, thanks her warmly, and not one wrong word is said all evening. As always, the wrapping paper goes on the fire as it comes off. She goes home at midnight and never speaks to any of them again. What happened?
Christmas Eve · ★★☆
On the evening of 20 December a man finds his daughter's advent calendar: doors 21 to 24 are open and empty. Every other door was opened on its own day. She is eight, and she has taken nothing that was not hers. He cancels the table he had booked for Christmas Eve. Why?
Christmas Eve · ★★☆
A chalet, the road closed by snow since six. At midnight the hostess realises she does not know the name of one of the men in her sitting room. He has been drinking and laughing with her guests for five hours, he has lied to nobody, and two of those guests know exactly who he is. Who is he?
Christmas Eve · ★★☆
For four years now, a man who had not set foot in a church in 30 years has driven 400 kilometres every 24 December to attend midnight mass in a village where he does not live. He does not pray, does not take communion, speaks to nobody, and leaves before the end. Why?
Christmas Eve · ★★☆
His mother's house has stood empty since her funeral in October. On the morning of 24 December he gets there first, fires up the boiler, and drives off for the bread and the champagne. Two hours later the kitchen ceiling is on the floor and water is running through the whole house. He touched nothing else. What happened?
Christmas Eve · ★★☆
Christmas Eve, 10 at night. A man steps outside in his shirtsleeves and the door swings shut. No key, no phone, no neighbour, and it is minus six. He rings, he bangs, he shouts: the bell is dead, the shutters are closed, and 20 people are singing inside. Twenty minutes later he is at the table, having broken nothing. How?
Christmas Eve · ★★☆
On Christmas morning a two-year-old swallows something she picked up under the tree. She is not choking, she is not coughing, she breathes perfectly and asks for more chocolate. At the hospital she is taken ahead of everyone and put to sleep within the hour. What she swallowed is not sharp, not poisonous and not a medicine. Why the hurry?
Christmas Eve · ★☆☆
In October a woman left her husband and moved to another town without leaving an address. Nobody has it, not her family, not her bank. On 8 December she finds a letter in her box addressed to her six-year-old son, by name, at that address. She calls the police. She is wrong to be frightened. Why?
Christmas Eve · ★☆☆
On Christmas Eve a woman unwraps her sister-in-law's present: one of those ribboned boxes the shops sell by the 1000, a scented candle inside. Under the candle, a card with no name on it, written in her own hand. She has never written a word to her sister-in-law, and nobody is playing a trick on her. How is that possible?
Christmas Eve · ★☆☆
Just after midnight on Christmas Eve a man walks into casualty: he has lost the sight of his left eye. Nobody hit him, nothing exploded, and he never left his own front room. He was holding the thing that did it, a foot from his face, looking straight at it. He never saw it coming. What happened?
Christmas Eve · ★★★
A man gives his wife and his children presents of a kind he has never given them before: a fountain pen, a notebook, a coffee machine, a framed photograph. He bought nothing, stole nothing, borrowed nothing. On 6 January his wife finds a flattened cardboard box in the boot with his name on it, and understands. What happened?
Christmas Eve · ★★★
A family buys their tree on 1 December and tends it like a houseplant: standing in water the same evening, the reservoir checked daily, never once dry. On Christmas Eve a light string shorts out. Within a minute the room is gone. The fire officers will say they have rarely seen a tree that dry. How is that possible?
Christmas Eve · ★★★
A man is tried for a midnight murder, 40 kilometres from the house where he spent Christmas Eve. Seventeen guests honestly believe he stayed inside all evening. Snow has covered every track in the yard. A photograph taken there at one in the morning undermines his alibi. What does it show?
