How to Have Fun with Puzzles and Riddles

Puzzles and riddles have been around for centuries. However, it does not have to be a tedious affair. Today you are going to learn how you can still have fun with puzzles and riddles while using those brain cells. 

Solving riddles and puzzles can be full of laughter and giggles as well. First, you must attempt solving puzzles and riddles without looking at their solutions or searching for cheats. Other fun ways are to think outside the box, try to decode the puzzles upside down, and look at all possible solutions for riddles. To add more fun, you can challenge yourself by timing them or going head to head with your family, friend, or partner. 

While solving some of the world’s best brainteasers are centuries old, they offer perfect mental stimulation while you are stressed. So, instead of thinking of puzzles and riddles as a cumbersome affair, you can actually make a leisure activity to spend quality time with your family and friends. Whether it be solving a mind-twisting mathematic riddle or a 1000 piece puzzle. This article will teach you how to have fun with puzzles and riddles. 

While the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us all indoors, with many living in isolation, the puzzles and riddles reported soaring sales.  According to researchers, solving puzzles and riddles can be beneficial for you as they offer relaxation and improve your memory and concentration span. 

How Can Puzzles and Riddles be Fun? 

Solving riddles and puzzles can offer a sense of soothing and relaxation. According to Michael Vilensky, a psychologist working at Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University, trying to assemble a puzzle or solve with assurance that you will eventually decode it gives you a sense of relief. 

The puzzles and riddles give you a clear sense of goal and purpose to solve them on your own or have a go at them in a group. Working together with your partner, kids or friends can be a fun activity while making you feel like working towards something together. 

So, what we are trying to say here is; puzzles can really make you and your family happy. The entire ritual of trying to decode a riddle or assembling a puzzle can be both interactive and satisfying. After all, fun is spending quality time with yourself or the ones you love while allowing your brain to drift away from other worries of life, work, and what is going around. 

Imagine it is the end of a hectic day at work or a weekend, and it is time for you to go home. Normally, you will try to look for an escape from daily your day’s stress and strain. In this case, you will seek an after-work activity to wind down and let your hair down. 

This is where doing a jigsaw puzzle or solving a good riddle can be of service. You can either amuse yourself with these light and quirky brainteasers or make it a family activity and bond with the family. 

What the researchers Have to Say?

It is not just the puzzles and riddles fan and enthusiasts who say they have fun solving these brainteasers. There have been several researches proving that doing jigsaw puzzles can surely lift your spirits. 

Psychology says we humans can feel stressed from time to time. This can be due to failure at performing a task, achieve a goal, or simply out of boredom. However, doing a puzzle or solving a riddle gives us a chance to achieve that perfect balance of where our competence meets the challenge.  

The charm of solving a seemingly next to impossible brainteaser problem (a puzzle or a riddle) is that it gives you an adrenaline rush. With every piece that you fit correctly in a puzzle or decoding, a riddle clue gives you a sense of excitement and reassurance in your intelligence and abilities to overcome any challenge. 

6 Ways to Have Fun with Jigsaw Puzzles

While puzzles are challenging as they are but you can always add oomph and make them even more fun to solve with a bit of a twist, especially if you are already an expert puzzle solver. 

So let us look at new ways to have fun with jigsaw puzzles. This is a great way to re-attempt your old favorite puzzles and doing them in a new and exciting way. You will actually feel as if you are doing a brand new puzzle. Let us see how fast you can assemble the puzzles in your collection using the below-mentioned six fun ways. 

#1 - Do not Peek

So, you bought a favorite puzzle years ago, and it took you ages to complete it. However, it has been lying in your collection on a shelf or in the attic for years. Well, time to try all those old puzzles in a new fun way, i.e., you cannot look at the box or hints. 

As a true self-proclaimed puzzle nerd, you must purely use the visual abilities and nothing else. Having a sneak peek at the box for clues will be cheating. Do it alone or make it a family activity, and you are certainly going to share some banter and silly moments while scratching your heads. 

We would advise not to keep the box anywhere near because we do not want you to give in to the temptation and say, “oh well, I will just have a quick look.” While smaller puzzles may not be that much of a challenge, but imagine what assembling a 500 or 1000 pieces jigsaw puzzle will do to you.
Oh-Boy! It will be as if you have never seen that puzzle in your entire life. You think otherwise? 

#2 – the Upside Down Challenge

Sometimes all you need to have fun is add a twist into reassembling the puzzle.  All it takes is to take out that old puzzle or use a new puzzle and change the perspective. Instead of using the conventional method of starting in the upright position, try to reassemble the puzzle by looking at it upside down.  

This way, you will end up making silly mistakes, be able to laugh at yourself, and pay even more attention. This gamechanger will give you a new buzz of excitement and mental stimulation as if you have never tried your favorite puzzle before. Plus, now you can try that brand new puzzle you just bought in two different ways. 

This challenge is most effective when used for puzzles featuring people, landscapes, and interior scenes. This is because your mind will try to work harder in order to find familiar shapes in different angles. 

#3 – Time Yourself 

If you think of yourself as an expert puzzle assembler, why not challenge yourself by timing it. This will be a race against yourself trying to beat your personal best time to solve a puzzle. A puzzle is indeed for leisure and relaxation. However, pitting yourself against the clock can bring a sense of excitement and pleasant nervousness.

You can set a timer on the stopwatch for 15 minutes or half an hour to put together a puzzle. However, you can give it an hour per feature too. It all depends on the size and difficulty level of the puzzle you are attempting to assemble. 

If the puzzle has a higher difficulty level with a large number of pieces, you can time yourself by setting a limit for a couple of hours. In short, there are tons of ways you can customize the time challenge to fit suit your skill level and schedule. 

#4 – Forget the Edges

One of the most common strategies puzzle solvers use is, finding the pieces for the edges and creating an outer frame. You will not find a single puzzle dweeb on the planet; who will disagree that this is the easiest and effective method to map out any puzzle ever. 

So, what can we do to have fun with puzzles? Well, you will have to forget about the edges. Grab a random piece and starting building a puzzle around it. However, the challenge is not to touch the edges. You can begin with any part of the puzzle while avoiding edges at all times. They will be the last pieces you are going to place on the puzzle.

You can add all or a combination of all of the previously mentioned fun ways to add a little bit more fun to this task. Imagine not being able to look at the box for reference, doing the puzzle upside down, timing yourself, and starting from anywhere but the edges. 

That is going to be some fun with lots of head-scratching moments. Fancy trying?! It is not necessary – just saying! 

#5 – Going Head to Head with Someone

This one can actually apply to both puzzles and riddles. Going head to head in a competition with a family member or friend can be the ultimate way to have fun with puzzles and riddles. You can compete against each other while sharing some special and quality time together. 

You can also race to the middle on a single puzzle. Here, you and your friend start from the opposite side and compete to see who completes their side first.

Another way is to have a timed race. You can dare the opponent for a timed challenge. In this case, whoever will assemble the puzzle within the allotted time limit will be the winner. You can also use the same technique when trying to solve a riddle. 

#6 – Setting Limit on How Many Times You Can Try a Piece 

Whenever you want to sit down and study a puzzle, this strategy will add a fun and challenging aspect to the activity. The rule here is that you only try each piece a certain number of times. Moreover, you can also create a rule to try only a certain number of puzzle pieces in a single spot. 

The challenge may seem very simple, but it will require a lot of attention to detail. However, it is one of the most fun ways to solve a puzzle. 

5 Ways to Have Fun with Riddles

Riddles are hundreds of years old brainteasers passed down to us by our forefathers. The best thing about them is they have stood the test of time of how fun and imaginative riddles can be. The riddle is mostly about cleverly playing on words. Sometimes, the answer might be right in front, but you fail to see it. 

Modern-day riddles rely on the similar rule of wordplay, but most of them have double meanings.  You need a little bit of skill, vocabulary, and a pinch of luck, or else the riddle will keep you chewing your brains out of frustration. However, this is fun frustration, not a “kill me now” kind of fury. 

That said, here are some helpful, fun ways for you to unlock the inner mystery held by the riddles. You can apply these techniques to any riddle that you ever come across. 

#1 – Remember They Are the Real Tricksters

If you want to have fun with riddles and not feel frustrated, simply remember that their sole purpose is to trick you. So, while you may think the riddle is impossible to decode, rest assured there is an answer. 

If you cannot seem to find the answer in one language, explore other languages or look for a hint that may direct you to look for the answer in a different language or dialects. 

#2 – Breaking Riddle into Chunks 

Break the riddle into manageable chunks (if it has many different lines) and then try to decode each one. Once you have the clues for the divided sections, trying to put them together and find out what you can come up with. 

You can actually make this a family activity by assigning a section to a riddle to each participant. Once they have all possible solutions, you can mix and match to see which combination makes the more sense. This will give you a chance to spend quality time with your friends.

Plus, you will surely have a bit of laughter with the silliest logics and solutions each person comes up with. 

#3 – Thinking outside the Box

While the riddles are the most cleverly articulated minions of a mastermind riddler, they may not follow articulation rules when it comes to the answer. The choice of words and arrangement sequence can mislead you away from looking in the right direction for the answer. 

For example, “what runs, but never walks?” Now, as soon you hear this riddle, you will think of a living being, a human, an animal, or a bird. However, you have to remember that the riddle is all about confusing and tricking you. 

So think outside the box. You can use Google to do some research on what answer you may have in mind. However, we trust you and hope that you will not look for an answer – Where is fun in that?  So, run your mind horses in all directions instead of what may seem like an obvious answer. 

#4 – Trying the Alphabet Riddles

So the riddles use trickery as the primary weapon. However, it is time to have a bit of fun with riddles. You can try letter riddles that are basically brainteaser questions making a mockery of the alphabets. For example, “How is a D like a pirate?” 

(Spoiler Alert!) The answer is in the next line, but before you read further, try to think hard about what this riddle is, and what connection D has with pirate or vice versa. 

Well, the answer is “Because D follows the C.” Wait – What? 

Yes! In this riddle, the letter “C” is actually referring to the word “Sea.”  So D is like a pirate because it follows the Sea. 

#5 Trying Math Intensive Riddles

While alphabet riddles are a great laugh, mathematics riddles can be challenging and fun too. The first thing you must remember is there are no correct solutions. The math riddles are not actually math-intensive; they mostly use the numbers to mislead you, that’s all. 

You will have to learn to read between the lines and try to decode what the riddle is actually asking you. Breaking down the riddle may actually help you have a bit of fun with the riddle trying to look at it in ways you never perceived before. 

For example, “when do elephants have 8 feet?” Most likely, you will straightaway question the logic and mock the absurdity of the riddle because there is no way an elephant can have 8 feet – ever! However, it has a fairly reasonable answer to it, i.e., elephants have 8 feet if there are two of them together. 

Another example of how much fun you can have with puzzles and riddles. “What has 100 legs but cannot walk?” once again, your brain will jump directly into which creatures or animals may have 100 legs, but they do not walk, etc., etc.… 

However, you must reject the most obvious answers and look for something abstract. Here the correct answer is not a human being, an alien, a centipede, or any other living creature. The correct answer is 50 pairs of pants. Yes, 50 pair of pants has to legs, but they cannot walk. 

In the end, here are some riddles for you to try. 

• “How do you stop a skunk from smelling?”
• “What is alive but only has one foot?”
• “Why is the letter A like a flower?”

Good luck solving these riddles. However, you can use all the tips and tricks in this article and have fun with puzzles and riddles.