Simple Riddles ( ^ o ^)
1) Ebon shell quite a statement makes—
Light it emits and earth it shakes!
2) Love is patient, love is kind,
But it’s often hard to find.
Love is solid, love is fun;
How is it that four makes one?
3) Weakness uproots me not.
Of the sun I’m somewhat shy . . . .
Life to some, death to others,
Please strive to keep me dry.
4) With fire of power are two-dozen lit;
Upon rings enciphered they glow.
Sealed path shown, beyond truth’s gaze in stone
Into death and shadows below.
5) A massive rock, a giant face:
Rings in fire can help displace.
6) Extend, contract from place to place,
Secret boon of a ghostly race.
7) From arm to the air, just watch this bug go,
As it picks things up and drops them below!
8) Awakening, a fey flight,
And the tools of a Hero.
A troubled past, and curse of stone.
Travel into darkness.
Death of innocence, birth of destiny.
A marred victory. Repose.
9) While seeking the sky it never shall see,
A rotten horror of evil and death
Waits just underneath, grinning viciously,
To choke its prey to the very last breath.
10) A perfect bodyguard, dying never
(And a sight to behold, indeed),
Whose service burdens any endeavor
Lest fed by insatiable greed.
11) Journey under eaves and bough,
A far place you’ll come to know.
Through valley and pool, spirits walk on the breeze—
A tryst and a parting in the shadow of trees.
12) A dire choice
And exodus:
Vision skyward raised.
A trust in god
And providence:
Haven from homeland razed.
13) A cowardly fellow, yet ally most dear—
From far yet near he aids you here.
Who’s under that cloak of purple hare,
Making room in yours to hawk his ware?
14) Small treasures I find in the strangest of places—
In pots, bushes, and even under stone!
Who could have put them there, of all the land’s races?
Perhaps in youth would I have known . . . .
15) A Coleridgean journey, a tempest and wreck,
With seagull as burden of sin.
Where once it was, now not a speck:
Let guilt and memory sink in.
16) A trine aloft,
And sword below;
Two wings aside,
What do I show?
17) A shell of a home,
Both high and cold,
At last is warmed by the fire.
A broken stair,
And vast disrepair,
Made home at last by desire.
18) From three came a fourth,
But then there was one,
Whose labors, in blood,
May never be done.
19) Life and mystery, and both in excess;
Inside and out cartographic distress!
A spiriting away, should one digress;
The question of where is anyone's guess.
20) A western, barren land—
A way engraved in sand.
Feminine form, a martial pose:
This sisterhood an altar shows.
21) Much like a horse
(Less tall, of course);
Flippers and tail,
Fangs like a nail.
Dragging chest
With soaring crest;
A bushy 'stache
And quick to dash.
At every sound
It looks around.
In streams of wind
It will not bend.
In waters dry,
You'll hear its cry.
22) Beings in walls, deep inside caves,
Accepting of stones, your friendship they crave.
These circles made in varied shapes:
Without a pair, they’re left agape.
23) Made in stone and meant to last,
Memories of an unknown past:
Decrepit soldiers far from rare
Guard most ancient place of prayer.
This site of lore with skill was made;
Now all is ruined and decayed.
24) Trapped both in mind and in form,
A savior arrives in a storm;
A god to wake eight instruments takes,
Dispelling an island once warm.
25) All as one, yours to borrow:
Hope, fear, love, rage, life, and sorrow.
A final task at the end of days:
The time has come. Are you ready to play?
26) This rainbow of value
Sets the world a-turn;
So waste not what you find,
For far less can you earn.
27) In hidden cove
Where land lays wove,
Play royal verse
And falls disperse.
28) Twitching, rustling, crawling . . .
Moving, never going . . .
Only nighttime showing . . .
Golden treasure calling.
29) Set high upon a hill,
Or hiding under stone;
One hundred is a taste—
Nine hundred shows your will.
You'll soon begin to groan
Beneath the growing waste.
30) Famous craftsman and sage,
By your own pupil betrayed.
Both shrinking and growing,
A Hero's heart showing,
Before the Gate seals for an Age.
31) Red or blue is yours to choose,
Created from a wiggling ooze;
Within the woods we make our lair,
Our faces foul, our prices fair!
32) Wrested from a place of air,
Breaking cloud and sand—
A low-born tool, this bristly pair,
To scrape beneath the land.
33) With realm and people petrified—
Their faces frozen, terrified,
And crowned by crimson regicide,
Land’s life-stream ice-bound, ossified—
A Hero gains the mountainside,
To find his hope and task defied;
Yet tool he finds of alloy plied,
And flame to leave fire liquefied.
34) A turquoise flame
in copper frame.
A gift of greed
in time of need.
A helpful aid
in soulful trade.
A Hero’s tool
to catch a ghoul.
A guiding light
in day or night.
A final one,
and flame is done.
35) From flaming peak to sandy sea—
In blooming well, you seek all three.
When forged within their sacred blaze,
Your sword shall purge all evil ways.
36) Sown and sealed within the past,
In ray-soaked earth to millennia last;
Its golden flesh and seeded womb
Save tempest numen from the tomb.
37) In darkness darker than darkest night
Avian guides shall guide with light.
38) Joyous and playful, a daylight delight;
Violent and dreadful, a midnight fright!
Forever in flux, caught in suspension
Till the hour of demonic redemption.
39) From humblest of start
To blackest of art,
A servant of light
Mastered evil's might.
Unseen and so small,
Now that which sees all.
Banished by four
Who are one once more.
Forgotten never,
Returning ever.
40) “Sad child in darkness who yearns for the light,
to you, whom no one can follow:
A guardian friend to set things aright—
familiar, yet heartless and hollow.
Absolve us our past, our dictates of strife,
and lead our kingdom from ruin to life.”
41) No matter the depth of your visit,
Your progress is always effaced;
Time’s protection you’ll gain—
Every move ‘gainst the grain—
Ending war on a king long debased.
42) Fauna or flora?
Or something between?
They’re timid and skittish—
But easily seen.
43) Courage is shattered in pieces anew;
Hero needs travel the reach of the land;
Artist must cipher illegible hand—
Records of creatures and specks in the blue.
Traces forgotten once known to the wise,
Salvaged and reintroduced to the skies.
What are we?
44) When floats away, at last released,
It disappears to raise deceased.
45) A token of friendship for when we’re apart,
Both memory and melody played from the heart;
Affinities youthful once conjured from sound,
Forgotten instead for another one found.
46) Pine forests, hidden mountain vale
Single dirt road, watchful spring
Swift-gliding hawk, parting stream
Young farmhand becomes a hero
47) Ingenious collector
And thoughtful aesthete;
With detailed physique,
His works are unique—
In full he can capture
The faces you meet.
48) Use flame to tame the glow of snow,
And tool to fuel a trail ice-pale;
You force a course to sound profound,
And bells toll knells to bless success.
49) They’re hidden and old, both tiny and smart,
These Guards by Guardians sent;
In chairs they’re bound but they still get around,
To reseal a land that was rent.
50) Get three and I’m yours;
If I see you, you’re mine.
How weird to be armed
With a body not thine . . . .
51) You quest-
ion my o- such high
utfit, do office. You
you? We- dare to m-
ll, this is n- ake fun of
ormal for one of my haberdasher!?
52) A system of veins
On the body divine;
A seal on all banes
Once our paths realign.
53) The past is present,
The future now.
Play these strings,
And time shall bow.
54) This item’s inlay
Is a godly cachet.
To heaven they flee,
These two dozen and three.
55) Oh, small betrayed, your home mislaid!
By friend waylaid, who form unmade!
Your quest delayed, and heart dismayed.
Though you have strayed through unknown glade,
With bond of trade, my notes pervade:
All forms remade, all evils fade.
56) When the third erupts in faded light,
The land and people will know doom.
One by shadow, begun in slavery;
One in darkness, drowning order;
The last secured by wisdom’s loss—
And true evil shall be born in blood.
57) In song,
We mirror you,
And leap in gratitude.
Submerged, we wait, we watch, we hope
For rain.
58) Human-made,
Maiden-given;
Goddess-seamed,
Seem a Hero.
59) I track the phantom iron-horse;
My bearings spot its sooty source.
60) Doubled once,
Doubled twice:
A tetrad linked
As one we slice!
61) Foretold, one in one hundred;
Taken and twisted by two;
Forever seeking the three;
Always stopped by the one.
62) My glow stands for dough—
Cash gone in a flash.
Try'n to shoot me to loot me
While spammin' for Mammon?
Though my bond to money is funny,
All of my coin you'll never purloin.
63) It appears at night and departs at light;
It somehow ingests, yet never digests—
A rattling sound from a burial mound;
Reborn from the ground it still roams around.
64) Two oldsters gammin’ over a pint:
“Have’e seen ‘em,
Crawlin’, searchin’, flyin’?
Some’re half-buried, like old potsherds,
But eyes always watchin’ . . .
Look all new, yet mighty ancient:
All moss’n metal — grime’n gears!
Ain’t nothin’ what can take ‘em out, seems,
And what’re they even guardin’?”
65) Inside of a mushroom, or tucked in a shoe,
A tiny bed, hearth, and a working bench, too;
Placers of items—gems, health, and food,
To belittle their size does seem quite rude.
66) I am lost, forever,
Though I can be found.
What became of what I was?
With me there is no past, no future:
Nothing but blurred boundaries.
What became of yesterday?
I play a perpetual game:
Hiding, yet eternally seeking.
Can you ever forgive me my tricks?
Music attends me. Laughter follows.
I follow no rules but my own.
Do you think me cruel?
We share a timeless bond,
Tied together by a sacred fate.
Do you still remember your friends?
67) I bear bones through Styx and stones,
A knell upon the mist;
I sail beyond the mortal veil
Should royalty insist.
68) “O Fairest Chromaticism!
By you they called us kin.”
“Our nomen was our omen,
But we failed, to our chagrin.”
“Through lives both bleak and fleeting,
We studied Nature’s meetings.”
“We ruled red sun and palest moon,
And governed rain and shine.”
“Yet now we roam no longer—”
“—cut off from lands divine.”
69) WANTED
By Order of the Honorable Town Mayor,
All Citizens are to be on the Lookout for:
1. Misnomer miscreants.
2. Puckish philanthropists.
3. Timetable tots.
4. Furtive fraternities.
5. Stellar sidekicks.
Reward: 20 stickers.
70) Harmonic motion to and fro:
Divine, it tames the unseen flow.
71) This spectacle’s buried far from sight,
Underneath a lofty height—
These twins immersed in warming earth
Prove host to ancient monster’s birth.
72) A failed father will find a son,
From hadal halls harnessing wind,
On whale’s-way wending swiftly.
Rune reading, redemption seeking,
Destiny delivering, doom sealing,
Future freeing, flood calling.
73) Oh no! Oh my! Wherever have they gone?
Oh my! Oh no! Oh, how can I go on?
My circlet with twenty-four stones,
Shimmering with green and pink tones,
Now scattered in pairs across the land!
I know you have one in your hand . . . .
74) A kingdom falls while rising,
Reaching greater heights;
Its future brightens, dimming—
Past entrusts its light.
75) A waxy character with a tapered form,
It brightens up the room . . . a bit too ardently.
76) Brother, sister, sleeper, dreamer:
Memories in eight pieces dwell.
Secret-keepers, child-bearers:
Hoping chaos to dispel.
77) Topsy-turvy—familiar place turned on its head,
Where generosity is now but selfless greed,
Where those who have not cannot ever hope to tread,
And treachery assumes a guise of innocence.
78) Does Lady Luck smile, or leer?
Wealth build up or trickle down?
Is happiness explosive?
Are wishes straight as arrows?
Sink a little, cache a lot:
You net less than you cast in.
79) On my journey midst the shadows,
I found myself in a forest dark,
Where certain trees had their own souls.
Reaching out to touch, I flew back:
A torrent of words, ire, relief—
Some had bites far worse than their barks!
80) Being jolted awake from my deep dark slumber
is a devil, a madness, a bummer!
And casting dust in my eyes?
Enough to hex you (or give you a prize?)—
Damn you! I mean, thank you . . . sir?
81) What floats, dives, and soars,
and when you’re grown is yours?
What can charge, rush, and spin,
and breezes like the wind?
What is one half of your soul
and will one day make you whole?
82) Tranquil plain to field of battle,
triggered by your daylight footstep.
Fruitful hillock pierces landscape,
bristling bladelike through the grasses.
Either taking root or taking wing,
crown of thorns protects its peacetime.
Light it emits and earth it shakes!
2) Love is patient, love is kind,
But it’s often hard to find.
Love is solid, love is fun;
How is it that four makes one?
3) Weakness uproots me not.
Of the sun I’m somewhat shy . . . .
Life to some, death to others,
Please strive to keep me dry.
4) With fire of power are two-dozen lit;
Upon rings enciphered they glow.
Sealed path shown, beyond truth’s gaze in stone
Into death and shadows below.
5) A massive rock, a giant face:
Rings in fire can help displace.
6) Extend, contract from place to place,
Secret boon of a ghostly race.
7) From arm to the air, just watch this bug go,
As it picks things up and drops them below!
8) Awakening, a fey flight,
And the tools of a Hero.
A troubled past, and curse of stone.
Travel into darkness.
Death of innocence, birth of destiny.
A marred victory. Repose.
9) While seeking the sky it never shall see,
A rotten horror of evil and death
Waits just underneath, grinning viciously,
To choke its prey to the very last breath.
10) A perfect bodyguard, dying never
(And a sight to behold, indeed),
Whose service burdens any endeavor
Lest fed by insatiable greed.
11) Journey under eaves and bough,
A far place you’ll come to know.
Through valley and pool, spirits walk on the breeze—
A tryst and a parting in the shadow of trees.
12) A dire choice
And exodus:
Vision skyward raised.
A trust in god
And providence:
Haven from homeland razed.
13) A cowardly fellow, yet ally most dear—
From far yet near he aids you here.
Who’s under that cloak of purple hare,
Making room in yours to hawk his ware?
14) Small treasures I find in the strangest of places—
In pots, bushes, and even under stone!
Who could have put them there, of all the land’s races?
Perhaps in youth would I have known . . . .
15) A Coleridgean journey, a tempest and wreck,
With seagull as burden of sin.
Where once it was, now not a speck:
Let guilt and memory sink in.
16) A trine aloft,
And sword below;
Two wings aside,
What do I show?
17) A shell of a home,
Both high and cold,
At last is warmed by the fire.
A broken stair,
And vast disrepair,
Made home at last by desire.
18) From three came a fourth,
But then there was one,
Whose labors, in blood,
May never be done.
19) Life and mystery, and both in excess;
Inside and out cartographic distress!
A spiriting away, should one digress;
The question of where is anyone's guess.
20) A western, barren land—
A way engraved in sand.
Feminine form, a martial pose:
This sisterhood an altar shows.
21) Much like a horse
(Less tall, of course);
Flippers and tail,
Fangs like a nail.
Dragging chest
With soaring crest;
A bushy 'stache
And quick to dash.
At every sound
It looks around.
In streams of wind
It will not bend.
In waters dry,
You'll hear its cry.
22) Beings in walls, deep inside caves,
Accepting of stones, your friendship they crave.
These circles made in varied shapes:
Without a pair, they’re left agape.
23) Made in stone and meant to last,
Memories of an unknown past:
Decrepit soldiers far from rare
Guard most ancient place of prayer.
This site of lore with skill was made;
Now all is ruined and decayed.
24) Trapped both in mind and in form,
A savior arrives in a storm;
A god to wake eight instruments takes,
Dispelling an island once warm.
25) All as one, yours to borrow:
Hope, fear, love, rage, life, and sorrow.
A final task at the end of days:
The time has come. Are you ready to play?
26) This rainbow of value
Sets the world a-turn;
So waste not what you find,
For far less can you earn.
27) In hidden cove
Where land lays wove,
Play royal verse
And falls disperse.
28) Twitching, rustling, crawling . . .
Moving, never going . . .
Only nighttime showing . . .
Golden treasure calling.
29) Set high upon a hill,
Or hiding under stone;
One hundred is a taste—
Nine hundred shows your will.
You'll soon begin to groan
Beneath the growing waste.
30) Famous craftsman and sage,
By your own pupil betrayed.
Both shrinking and growing,
A Hero's heart showing,
Before the Gate seals for an Age.
31) Red or blue is yours to choose,
Created from a wiggling ooze;
Within the woods we make our lair,
Our faces foul, our prices fair!
32) Wrested from a place of air,
Breaking cloud and sand—
A low-born tool, this bristly pair,
To scrape beneath the land.
33) With realm and people petrified—
Their faces frozen, terrified,
And crowned by crimson regicide,
Land’s life-stream ice-bound, ossified—
A Hero gains the mountainside,
To find his hope and task defied;
Yet tool he finds of alloy plied,
And flame to leave fire liquefied.
34) A turquoise flame
in copper frame.
A gift of greed
in time of need.
A helpful aid
in soulful trade.
A Hero’s tool
to catch a ghoul.
A guiding light
in day or night.
A final one,
and flame is done.
35) From flaming peak to sandy sea—
In blooming well, you seek all three.
When forged within their sacred blaze,
Your sword shall purge all evil ways.
36) Sown and sealed within the past,
In ray-soaked earth to millennia last;
Its golden flesh and seeded womb
Save tempest numen from the tomb.
37) In darkness darker than darkest night
Avian guides shall guide with light.
38) Joyous and playful, a daylight delight;
Violent and dreadful, a midnight fright!
Forever in flux, caught in suspension
Till the hour of demonic redemption.
39) From humblest of start
To blackest of art,
A servant of light
Mastered evil's might.
Unseen and so small,
Now that which sees all.
Banished by four
Who are one once more.
Forgotten never,
Returning ever.
40) “Sad child in darkness who yearns for the light,
to you, whom no one can follow:
A guardian friend to set things aright—
familiar, yet heartless and hollow.
Absolve us our past, our dictates of strife,
and lead our kingdom from ruin to life.”
41) No matter the depth of your visit,
Your progress is always effaced;
Time’s protection you’ll gain—
Every move ‘gainst the grain—
Ending war on a king long debased.
42) Fauna or flora?
Or something between?
They’re timid and skittish—
But easily seen.
43) Courage is shattered in pieces anew;
Hero needs travel the reach of the land;
Artist must cipher illegible hand—
Records of creatures and specks in the blue.
Traces forgotten once known to the wise,
Salvaged and reintroduced to the skies.
What are we?
44) When floats away, at last released,
It disappears to raise deceased.
45) A token of friendship for when we’re apart,
Both memory and melody played from the heart;
Affinities youthful once conjured from sound,
Forgotten instead for another one found.
46) Pine forests, hidden mountain vale
Single dirt road, watchful spring
Swift-gliding hawk, parting stream
Young farmhand becomes a hero
47) Ingenious collector
And thoughtful aesthete;
With detailed physique,
His works are unique—
In full he can capture
The faces you meet.
48) Use flame to tame the glow of snow,
And tool to fuel a trail ice-pale;
You force a course to sound profound,
And bells toll knells to bless success.
49) They’re hidden and old, both tiny and smart,
These Guards by Guardians sent;
In chairs they’re bound but they still get around,
To reseal a land that was rent.
50) Get three and I’m yours;
If I see you, you’re mine.
How weird to be armed
With a body not thine . . . .
51) You quest-
ion my o- such high
utfit, do office. You
you? We- dare to m-
ll, this is n- ake fun of
ormal for one of my haberdasher!?
52) A system of veins
On the body divine;
A seal on all banes
Once our paths realign.
53) The past is present,
The future now.
Play these strings,
And time shall bow.
54) This item’s inlay
Is a godly cachet.
To heaven they flee,
These two dozen and three.
55) Oh, small betrayed, your home mislaid!
By friend waylaid, who form unmade!
Your quest delayed, and heart dismayed.
Though you have strayed through unknown glade,
With bond of trade, my notes pervade:
All forms remade, all evils fade.
56) When the third erupts in faded light,
The land and people will know doom.
One by shadow, begun in slavery;
One in darkness, drowning order;
The last secured by wisdom’s loss—
And true evil shall be born in blood.
57) In song,
We mirror you,
And leap in gratitude.
Submerged, we wait, we watch, we hope
For rain.
58) Human-made,
Maiden-given;
Goddess-seamed,
Seem a Hero.
59) I track the phantom iron-horse;
My bearings spot its sooty source.
60) Doubled once,
Doubled twice:
A tetrad linked
As one we slice!
61) Foretold, one in one hundred;
Taken and twisted by two;
Forever seeking the three;
Always stopped by the one.
62) My glow stands for dough—
Cash gone in a flash.
Try'n to shoot me to loot me
While spammin' for Mammon?
Though my bond to money is funny,
All of my coin you'll never purloin.
63) It appears at night and departs at light;
It somehow ingests, yet never digests—
A rattling sound from a burial mound;
Reborn from the ground it still roams around.
64) Two oldsters gammin’ over a pint:
“Have’e seen ‘em,
Crawlin’, searchin’, flyin’?
Some’re half-buried, like old potsherds,
But eyes always watchin’ . . .
Look all new, yet mighty ancient:
All moss’n metal — grime’n gears!
Ain’t nothin’ what can take ‘em out, seems,
And what’re they even guardin’?”
65) Inside of a mushroom, or tucked in a shoe,
A tiny bed, hearth, and a working bench, too;
Placers of items—gems, health, and food,
To belittle their size does seem quite rude.
66) I am lost, forever,
Though I can be found.
What became of what I was?
With me there is no past, no future:
Nothing but blurred boundaries.
What became of yesterday?
I play a perpetual game:
Hiding, yet eternally seeking.
Can you ever forgive me my tricks?
Music attends me. Laughter follows.
I follow no rules but my own.
Do you think me cruel?
We share a timeless bond,
Tied together by a sacred fate.
Do you still remember your friends?
67) I bear bones through Styx and stones,
A knell upon the mist;
I sail beyond the mortal veil
Should royalty insist.
68) “O Fairest Chromaticism!
By you they called us kin.”
“Our nomen was our omen,
But we failed, to our chagrin.”
“Through lives both bleak and fleeting,
We studied Nature’s meetings.”
“We ruled red sun and palest moon,
And governed rain and shine.”
“Yet now we roam no longer—”
“—cut off from lands divine.”
69) WANTED
By Order of the Honorable Town Mayor,
All Citizens are to be on the Lookout for:
1. Misnomer miscreants.
2. Puckish philanthropists.
3. Timetable tots.
4. Furtive fraternities.
5. Stellar sidekicks.
Reward: 20 stickers.
70) Harmonic motion to and fro:
Divine, it tames the unseen flow.
71) This spectacle’s buried far from sight,
Underneath a lofty height—
These twins immersed in warming earth
Prove host to ancient monster’s birth.
72) A failed father will find a son,
From hadal halls harnessing wind,
On whale’s-way wending swiftly.
Rune reading, redemption seeking,
Destiny delivering, doom sealing,
Future freeing, flood calling.
73) Oh no! Oh my! Wherever have they gone?
Oh my! Oh no! Oh, how can I go on?
My circlet with twenty-four stones,
Shimmering with green and pink tones,
Now scattered in pairs across the land!
I know you have one in your hand . . . .
74) A kingdom falls while rising,
Reaching greater heights;
Its future brightens, dimming—
Past entrusts its light.
75) A waxy character with a tapered form,
It brightens up the room . . . a bit too ardently.
76) Brother, sister, sleeper, dreamer:
Memories in eight pieces dwell.
Secret-keepers, child-bearers:
Hoping chaos to dispel.
77) Topsy-turvy—familiar place turned on its head,
Where generosity is now but selfless greed,
Where those who have not cannot ever hope to tread,
And treachery assumes a guise of innocence.
78) Does Lady Luck smile, or leer?
Wealth build up or trickle down?
Is happiness explosive?
Are wishes straight as arrows?
Sink a little, cache a lot:
You net less than you cast in.
79) On my journey midst the shadows,
I found myself in a forest dark,
Where certain trees had their own souls.
Reaching out to touch, I flew back:
A torrent of words, ire, relief—
Some had bites far worse than their barks!
80) Being jolted awake from my deep dark slumber
is a devil, a madness, a bummer!
And casting dust in my eyes?
Enough to hex you (or give you a prize?)—
Damn you! I mean, thank you . . . sir?
81) What floats, dives, and soars,
and when you’re grown is yours?
What can charge, rush, and spin,
and breezes like the wind?
What is one half of your soul
and will one day make you whole?
82) Tranquil plain to field of battle,
triggered by your daylight footstep.
Fruitful hillock pierces landscape,
bristling bladelike through the grasses.
Either taking root or taking wing,
crown of thorns protects its peacetime.