Easy Thanksgiving riddles for kids
Kid-solvable here means a seven-year-old gets there on their own, from the clues, without an adult explaining the joke afterwards. Every answer is something a child has seen with their own eyes: a plate, a leaf, a parade, a fork. Nothing depends on reading, so these work in a car, in a line at the airport, or as a five-minute classroom warm-up in the week before the break.
Read them in the order given. The first ten are the gentlest, and the last five (the whipped cream, the carrot, the wishbone) ask for one extra step of thinking, so they are the ones to save for an older sibling who keeps answering everything first. With a group of children, let them shout; with one child, give a second clue rather than the answer.
Q1.I am a big bird with a tail that opens like a fan, and in November I am the star of the dinner table. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A turkey
The easiest one on the page, which is exactly why it goes first: it gets a shy child their first right answer.
Q2.I am orange and round and I grow on a vine along the ground. Cut me open in October and I am a lantern; cut me open in November and I am a pie. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A pumpkin
Botanically a pumpkin is a fruit, not a vegetable, because the part we eat grew from the flower and holds the seeds.
Q3.I fall out of the trees in red, orange and yellow, and children pile me up so they can jump in me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Leaves
Leaves are green all summer because of chlorophyll. When the tree stops making it in autumn, the yellows and oranges that were hiding underneath finally show.
Q4.I have hundreds of little yellow teeth in neat rows, but I never bite anything. Butter and salt make me better. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Corn on the cob
Every kernel on a cob grew from its own silk thread, which is why an ear that was poorly pollinated has gaps.
Q5.I am the eleventh month of the year, and Thanksgiving always happens somewhere inside me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: November
November was the ninth month in the old Roman calendar, which is where the novem, meaning nine, comes from.
Q6.I am the day of the week that Thanksgiving always lands on, and I come right after Wednesday. What day am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Thursday
Since 1942 it has been the fourth Thursday of November every single year, so nobody has to look it up.
Q7.I am brown and warm, I pour out of a little jug, and my favorite place to swim is a hole in the middle of the mashed potatoes. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Gravy
Good gravy is nothing but the juice that dripped off the bird, thickened with a spoonful of flour.
Q8.I am a tiny red berry. I grow in a flooded field, I bounce when I am fresh, and I am far too sour to eat on my own. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A cranberry
Cranberry growers really do sort the crop by bouncing it: a firm berry hops over a barrier, a soft one does not.
Q9.Enormous cartoon characters float above me, marching bands play inside me, and I move slowly down the streets of New York on Thanksgiving morning. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
The parade started in 1924, and the giant balloons joined three years later, in 1927.
Q10.I am white and fluffy, I used to be a potato, and I always have a little crater scooped in the top of me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Mashed potatoes
The crater has a job: it holds the gravy so it does not run off the plate into the green beans.
Q11.I am a hot metal box in the kitchen, and the turkey spends the whole morning shut inside me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The oven
Ask a child what the oven is thinking and you get a better answer than the riddle deserves.
Q12.I have four legs but I cannot walk, and once a year everybody in the family crowds around me at the same time. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The dining table
A classic riddle shape — a thing with legs that cannot walk — dressed for November.
Q13.I am flat and round and white, and everything on the Thanksgiving table ends up stacked on top of me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A plate
Good first answer for the youngest player, because it is right in front of them.
Q14.I have three or four sharp points but I am not dangerous. I live beside your plate and I carry your dinner to your mouth. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A fork
The points are called tines, which is a useful new word to hand a six-year-old.
Q15.I am a small brown nut wearing a little cap. I drop off an oak tree in the fall, and squirrels bury me and then forget where. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: An acorn
Squirrels forget enough of their buried acorns that they accidentally plant new oak trees.
Q16.I wear old clothes and a hat, I stand in a field all day, and my only job is to frighten the crows. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A scarecrow
Crows are clever enough to work out that a scarecrow never moves, so farmers have to keep shifting it.
Q17.I am the season that comes after summer and before winter, when the air turns cold and the trees change color. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Autumn, or fall
Both words are correct. Fall is the older English word for it, kept in America and mostly dropped in Britain.
Q18.I am a tall black hat with a big buckle on the front, and I turn up in every single school play about Thanksgiving. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A Pilgrim hat
Fair warning: the buckle is a costume invention. Pilgrims wore hats, but the buckled hat is a later storybook idea.
Q19.I grow on a tree, I can be red or green, and I can be squeezed into cider or baked into the other pie. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: An apple
Every apple variety you can name was grown from a cutting, because an apple seed never grows into the same apple it came from.
Q20.Everybody watches me on television after dinner. I am played with a brown ball that has pointy ends, and the grown-ups fall asleep halfway through me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Football
There has been a Thanksgiving game in Detroit almost every year since 1934, which is why it feels compulsory.
Q21.I grow under the ground, I am long and orange, rabbits love me, and I always turn up on the vegetable plate nobody finishes. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A carrot
The part you eat is the root. The leafy green top is what the carrot grows above the soil.
Q22.I hiss when I come out of my can, I am white and sweet, and I sit in a swirl on top of a warm slice of pie. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Whipped cream
Slightly harder than it looks, because the hiss is the clue that gets a child from cream to the can.
Q23.Two people grab hold of me after dinner and pull in opposite directions, and whoever ends up with the bigger piece gets a wish. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The wishbone
It is the V-shaped bone in front of the breast, properly called the furcula, and it helps a flying bird's wings spring back.
Q24.I say my own name over and over, and my name rhymes with wobble. What sound am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A gobble
Only the male turkeys make it. The females answer with clucks and yelps, which is a fact worth saving for the turkey round.
Q25.There are a hundred of us at dinner, we are all different, and grown-ups keep asking children to name one. What are we?Tap to reveal
Answer: Things to be thankful for
The one riddle here with no single right answer, which makes it a good last question before the meal starts.
Funny Thanksgiving riddles, puns and wordplay
These are jokes wearing a riddle's coat. Nobody solves a pun by reasoning; they solve it by hearing the second meaning, so the right way to run this section is one riddle at a time, out loud, with a pause. Delivered in a block of thirty they stop landing after about number eight.
Two of them are proper puzzles rather than jokes — the letter G and the letter T — and they are the ones adults get last, because adults look for a thing and not a letter. The farm one about ears, eyes and stalks is the best of the bunch for a big group, because people keep going after the first two answers. If your crowd is teenagers, expect the groans to be performative; that is the correct response and means it worked.
Q1.The cranberries went bright red the second the turkey walked into the kitchen. What had they just seen?Tap to reveal
Answer: The turkey dressing
The oldest Thanksgiving pun there is, and still the one most likely to get a shout of recognition from a grandparent.
Q2.The Pilgrims only ever liked one kind of music, and it was named after the place they landed. What was it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Plymouth Rock
The rock itself is a much smaller and less impressive lump of granite than the legend suggests, and there is no contemporary record of anyone stepping onto it.
Q3.A turkey that can sprint has a name borrowed from the restaurant business. What is it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Fast food
Not a lie, either: a wild turkey can run at over 20 miles an hour.
Q4.A cook asks which side of the turkey has the most feathers. What is the honest answer?Tap to reveal
Answer: The outside
A riddle that works by refusing the question. Children love it because for once the obvious answer is the clever one.
Q5.What do you get if you cross a turkey with a banjo?Tap to reveal
Answer: A bird that plucks itself
Pluck does double duty: banjo strings are plucked, and a bird is plucked of its feathers.
Q6.Of everything sitting on the Thanksgiving table, which item smells the best?Tap to reveal
Answer: Your nose
It is the only thing at the table doing any smelling. Keep it for an audience that has already been softened up by two or three fair riddles.
Q7.The soup at Thanksgiving dinner cost more than the turkey. What was in it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Twenty-four carrots
Twenty-four karat is pure gold, and gold is measured in karats out of twenty-four.
Q8.A mother turkey caught her son misbehaving at the table and told him: if your father could see you now, he would turn over in his ___. Finish it.Tap to reveal
Answer: Gravy
Grave becomes gravy, which is unforgivable and also the best line in the section.
Q9.I am a key. I will not open a single door in your house, but nothing about dinner starts until I arrive. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A turkey
The word literally ends in key, which is the whole trick, and children find it faster than adults do.
Q10.What is a turkey's favorite dessert?Tap to reveal
Answer: Peach gobbler
Cobbler becomes gobbler. If someone in the room bakes, watch their face.
Q11.What comes at the end of Thanksgiving, the end of a long meal, and the end of everything?Tap to reveal
Answer: The letter G
A classic misdirection: the answer is not an event but a letter. Say the words slowly and somebody will get there.
Q12.I begin Thanksgiving and I end a family fight. Which letter am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The letter T
Harder than the G version, because a fight ending in T is less obvious than a word ending in G.
Q13.What do you get if you cross a turkey with an octopus?Tap to reveal
Answer: Enough drumsticks for everybody at the table
Solvable rather than random, which is what separates a good crossbreed joke from a bad one.
Q14.There is one word for a turkey on the Friday after Thanksgiving. What is it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lucky
A joke that lands on a beat of silence. Works better with adults than children.
Q15.A turkey laid an egg right on the peak of the barn roof. What did the farmer get?Tap to reveal
Answer: An egg roll
Roll works twice: the egg rolls off the ridge, and an egg roll is something you order for dinner.
Q16.Why did the Pilgrim's pants keep falling down in the school play?Tap to reveal
Answer: Because his belt buckle was on his hat
Also a quiet correction of the costume: the buckled hat is an invention of nineteenth-century illustrators, not Pilgrim clothing.
Q17.Never tell a secret on a farm the day before Thanksgiving. Give three reasons.Tap to reveal
Answer: The corn has ears, the potatoes have eyes, and the beans stalk
The best group riddle in this section: people get the ears immediately, the eyes after a second, and the beanstalk only once somebody says it out loud.
Q18.What do you call it when it rains turkeys?Tap to reveal
Answer: Fowl weather
Foul and fowl sound identical, and fowl is the correct old word for a bird you eat.
Q19.The turkey turned down pumpkin pie, pecan pie and ice cream. What was its excuse?Tap to reveal
Answer: It was already stuffed
The one pun on this page that a very young child can also get, because stuffed means full and also means full of stuffing.
Q20.What do you call a cranberry that is feeling sad?Tap to reveal
Answer: A blueberry
Feeling blue plus a real berry. Short, clean, and impossible to over-explain.
Q21.A hunter crept up on a turkey in the woods. The turkey looked him in the eye and said two words. What were they?Tap to reveal
Answer: Quack, quack
The turkey is pretending to be a duck. Children find this far funnier than adults expect.
Q22.What do you get if you cross a turkey with a ghost?Tap to reveal
Answer: A poultry-geist
Poltergeist becomes poultry-geist, which is the rare crossbreed joke that also sounds like a real word.
Q23.The police had a long talk with the cook on Thanksgiving morning. She had been beating, whipping and battering all day. What had she actually been doing?Tap to reveal
Answer: Beating the eggs, whipping the cream and battering the yams
Three kitchen verbs that all sound like assault. The set-up does the work, so deliver it flat and let the list land.
Q24.Where does a turkey go when it wants to dance?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Butterball
Butterball is both the brand on half the frozen turkeys in America and, if you hear it differently, a ball you dance at.
Q25.How do you keep a turkey in suspense?Tap to reveal
Answer: You have to wait until tomorrow to find out
The joke is the refusal to answer, so it only works once per audience. Save it for the end of a round.
Q26.What do sweet potatoes wear to bed the night before Thanksgiving?Tap to reveal
Answer: Their yammies
Yams and jammies. Technically the orange things in the casserole are sweet potatoes, not true yams, which makes the pun worse and therefore better.
Q27.How do you make a turkey float?Tap to reveal
Answer: Two scoops of ice cream, a bottle of root beer and one very confused turkey
Float as in an ice-cream float rather than float as in buoyancy. Young children will insist on explaining the recipe back to you.
Q28.Why did the pumpkin pie go to the dentist?Tap to reveal
Answer: It needed a filling
The filling is the custard inside the crust, and a filling is what a dentist puts in a tooth.
Q29.What do you call a potato that spends the whole meal gossiping about the other guests?Tap to reveal
Answer: A common tater
Commentator. The pun only works spoken aloud, so this is one to read out rather than print.
Q30.The scarecrow gets invited back to the farm's Thanksgiving dinner every single year. What does everybody say about him?Tap to reveal
Answer: That he is outstanding in his field
Out standing in his field, which is literally his job description, and also the oldest compliment in farming humour.
Thanksgiving food and cooking riddles
This section is aimed at the adults in the kitchen and anyone who has been handed a job. The answers are dishes, tools and techniques rather than jokes, so they suit a slower pace: one riddle per person while the potatoes boil, or read down the list while the table is being set.
Several double as genuinely useful cooking notes. The thermometer riddle is the only food-safety number worth memorising. The giblets one has saved more than one first-time host. The hardest here are the ambrosia salad and the corn casserole, which depend on where you grew up — if your family has never met either dish, skip them rather than watching the room go quiet.
Q1.I am a casserole of sweet potatoes wearing a hat of toasted white pillows. What is the hat made of?Tap to reveal
Answer: Marshmallows
The marshmallow topping was popularised by a 1917 recipe booklet funded by a marshmallow company, which is a fair description of how a lot of Thanksgiving works.
Q2.I am bread that has been torn up, dried out, seasoned, soaked in broth and then packed back inside a bird. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Stuffing, or dressing
Both words are right. Strictly, it is stuffing when it is cooked inside the bird and dressing when it is baked in a dish, though much of the South calls it dressing either way.
Q3.I am green, I came out of a can, and I hide under a crunchy golden blanket of fried onions. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Green bean casserole
Invented in 1955 by Dorcas Reilly in the Campbell's Soup test kitchen, which makes it younger than most grandparents at the table.
Q4.I am a spice whose name contains both a nut and a girl's nickname. I smell like the whole holiday and taste of almost nothing on my own. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nutmeg
Nut plus meg. Freshly grated nutmeg is dramatically stronger than the pre-ground kind, which is why the jar at the back of the cupboard tastes of dust.
Q5.I am orange inside, spiced brown on top, and named after something everyone calls a vegetable even though it is a fruit. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Pumpkin pie
Most canned pumpkin is not the carving kind but a tan-skinned squash grown for flavour and texture.
Q6.I am the pie that appears when the pumpkin pie has gone. I am sticky, far too sweet, and named after a nut native to North America. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Pecan pie
Pecan trees are native to the southern United States and northern Mexico, and Texas adopted the pecan as its state tree in 1919.
Q7.I look like a cabbage that never grew up, I come by the dozen on a single stalk, and half the table pretends to like me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Brussels sprouts
They genuinely taste better than they did thirty years ago: growers bred out much of the bitter compound in the 1990s.
Q8.I am the fat and juice left in the bottom of the roasting pan, and gravy cannot exist without me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The drippings
Skim most of the fat, keep the dark brown liquid underneath, and you have the entire secret of good gravy.
Q9.I go into the oven cold, pale and hard, and I come out golden and soft. I am the only thing at the table that rises. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dinner rolls
Rises is the clue that rules out everything else on the table, since only dough does it.
Q10.I am pressed out of apples, served warm in a mug, and a cinnamon stick is usually standing in me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Apple cider
In America cider means the cloudy unfiltered juice; in Britain and Ireland the same word means the alcoholic drink.
Q11.The cook keeps pushing me into the thickest part of the thigh, and she will not relax until I read 165. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A meat thermometer
165°F is the temperature the USDA gives for poultry. It is the one number on this page worth remembering, and it beats every trick about clear juices.
Q12.I come free inside the turkey in a small paper bag, and every year somebody roasts the bird with me still in there. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The giblets
Neck, heart, liver and gizzard. Simmer them into stock for the gravy, or throw them out, but check for them before the bird goes in.
Q13.I slide out of a can in one piece and I keep the rings of the can I came out of. Somebody always argues about whether I should be on the table at all. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jellied cranberry sauce
The ridges are on the inside of the can for exactly this reason: they let the jelly break the seal and slide out whole.
Q14.I am a flat grid of holes on a handle, I am kept in the back of a drawer for eleven months, and I have exactly one job. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A potato masher
Use it rather than a food processor: whipping potatoes too hard bursts the starch and turns the bowl to glue.
Q15.Every half hour the cook opens the oven, squeezes a big rubber bulb over the bird and closes it again. What is she doing?Tap to reveal
Answer: Basting
Cooks argue about whether it helps, since the skin browns fine without it and every door-opening drops the oven temperature.
Q16.I am made of corn, eggs, sugar and cornbread mix. I am sweet enough to be dessert and I am served as a side dish. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Corn casserole, or corn pudding
One of two regional riddles in this section. Common across the South and Midwest, close to unknown in New England.
Q17.You have to break me before you can use me, and there is no pumpkin pie without me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: An egg
A classic riddle form, and the eggs are what turn spiced pumpkin purée into custard instead of soup.
Q18.I am invented at eleven o'clock at night, standing at an open fridge, out of four things that were already on the table. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The leftover turkey sandwich
Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and bread. Plenty of families will tell you this is better than the dinner.
Q19.I am sharp, I am handed to exactly one person at the table, and whoever holds me gets a title for the evening. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The carving knife
A long thin blade works far better than a heavy chef's knife, and a blunt one tears the breast into shreds.
Q20.I am the other pie: lattice on top, fruit underneath, and a whole phrase about America uses me as the measure of how American something is. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Apple pie
Apples are not native to North America. They arrived with European settlers, so as American as apple pie is a borrowed compliment.
Q21.I come in a green bottle with a cork, I am dark red and fizzy, I get poured into the good glasses, and I will not get anybody drunk. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sparkling grape juice
The point of it is the pop and the stemmed glass, which is the whole ritual minus the alcohol.
Q22.I am the bark of a tree. I am sold as a rolled-up stick or a brown powder, and one shake of me makes the house smell like the holiday. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Cinnamon
It really is bark, peeled from the inner layer of a cinnamon tree and dried until it curls.
Q23.The old rule says buy one of me for every guest, and a pound and a half each if you want sandwiches on Friday. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A pound of turkey
It sounds generous until you remember that bone, skin and drippings are included in the weight.
Q24.I arrive with carrots, celery and a tub of dip. I am the first thing put on the table and the last thing anybody touches. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The vegetable tray
Its real purpose is to give guests something to do with their hands while the cook is still swearing at the gravy.
Q25.I contain marshmallows, whipped topping, mandarin oranges and coconut, and my family insists on calling me a salad. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ambrosia salad
The hardest riddle in this section if your family has never served it, and instantly obvious if they have. Regional recognition is the whole difficulty.
Turkey riddles: the bird itself
Twenty-five riddles about one animal. Roughly a third are anatomy, a third are behaviour and biology, and a third are the human customs the bird has ended up attached to. Because the answers cluster tightly, this is the best section to run as a team round: split the room in two, ten riddles each, and the team that knows a hunter or a farmer will win.
The hardest three are the collective noun, the alarm call and the Benjamin Franklin question. The Franklin one is worth reading out even to people who think they know it, because the popular version is wrong and the real version is funnier. The snood and the wattle are fair, since both riddles tell you where on the bird to look and what the answer rhymes with.
Q1.I am the loose red flap of skin hanging under a turkey's beak, and my name rhymes with bottle. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The wattle
It helps the bird shed heat, since a turkey cannot sweat. It also floods with blood and changes color when the bird is excited.
Q2.I am the piece of skin that flops over the front of a male turkey's beak, I can go from short to long in seconds, and my name rhymes with mood. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The snood
Hens pay attention to it: studies have found they prefer males with longer snoods.
Q3.Only about half of all turkeys can make the sound turkeys are famous for. Which half?Tap to reveal
Answer: The males
Gobbling is a male advertisement, audible up to a mile away. Hens cluck, yelp and purr instead.
Q4.I am a male turkey, and I share my name with a very common name for a cat. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A tom
Tomcat and tom turkey, same word, same reason: it was a generic name for a male animal.
Q5.I am a female turkey, and my name is the same word used for a female chicken. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A hen
A young male turkey has its own word too: a jake, as opposed to a full-grown tom.
Q6.I am a baby turkey. Take the word for farmyard birds in general, keep the first five letters, and you have my name. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A poult
Poultry, minus the ry. The word comes from the same root as pullet, a young hen.
Q7.A wild turkey and a supermarket turkey stand side by side. One can fly up into a tree to sleep and one cannot get off the ground. Which is which, and why?Tap to reveal
Answer: The wild one flies; the farmed one is too heavy
Wild turkeys fly in short bursts at up to about 55 mph. Broad-breasted farm birds have been bred for so much breast meat that flight is impossible.
Q8.I am the word for a group of turkeys, and I share my name with a wooden beam holding up a roof. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A rafter
A rafter of turkeys, alongside the plainer flock. One of the genuinely hard ones here, but the roof clue makes it gettable.
Q9.The bird is named after a country it never came from. Which country?Tap to reveal
Answer: Turkey
The name arrived in English with birds traded through Turkish merchants. In Turkish the bird is called hindi, meaning Indian, so the confusion goes both ways.
Q10.A male turkey spreads his tail into a huge half-circle, drops his wings until they scrape the ground and walks in slow tight circles. What is he doing?Tap to reveal
Answer: Strutting, or displaying, for the hens
The scraped wingtips wear down visibly, which is one way hunters tell a mature tom from a young one.
Q11.I look like a stiff black paintbrush hanging off a tom turkey's chest, and hunters measure me and brag about me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The beard
It is a cluster of modified feathers, not hair, and it keeps growing through the bird's life, so a long one means an old bird.
Q12.I am the sharp spike on the back of a tom turkey's leg, and I share my name with something on a cowboy's boot. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A spur
Used for fighting other males. Like the beard, it lengthens with age.
Q13.I am a turkey's leg once it reaches the table, and I am named after the stick used to hit a musical instrument. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A drumstick
The name is about the shape: a knob of meat on a thin handle of bone, exactly like a drummer's stick.
Q14.The breast comes off the bird pale and the thigh comes off dark. Nothing was done differently to either one. Why are they different colors?Tap to reveal
Answer: The leg muscles work constantly and hold much more myoglobin
Myoglobin stores oxygen for muscles in steady use. A turkey stands and walks all day but barely uses its breast, so the breast stays pale.
Q15.I am the chemical everybody blames for the afternoon nap, and I am not actually guilty. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Tryptophan
Turkey has about as much tryptophan as chicken or beef. The drowsiness comes from a very large, carbohydrate-heavy meal, not the bird.
Q16.Every November one turkey receives something from the President of the United States and then goes to live on a farm. What does it receive?Tap to reveal
Answer: A presidential pardon
Turkeys have been presented to presidents since 1947, but the annual pardon as a staged ceremony dates from 1989 under George H. W. Bush.
Q17.I am a dance from the ragtime era, a way of walking, and a 5K race thousands of people run before breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The turkey trot
The Buffalo Turkey Trot, first run in 1896, is the oldest continuously held footrace in the United States.
Q18.Every November a room full of people answer telephones from panicking cooks, and they work for a turkey company. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Butterball Turkey Talk-Line
Running since 1981, staffed by trained home economists and dietitians, and by all accounts the calls get stranger as the morning goes on.
Q19.I am three birds in one: a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, all deboned and roasted together. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A turducken
Popularised in Louisiana and pushed into the mainstream by the broadcaster John Madden, who used to award pieces of one to football players on Thanksgiving.
Q20.In a bowling alley I am three strikes in a row. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A turkey
The usual explanation is that nineteenth-century alleys gave away a live turkey as a holiday prize for three consecutive strikes.
Q21.Benjamin Franklin is famous for wanting the turkey as America's national bird instead of the bald eagle. Did he?Tap to reveal
Answer: No — it is a myth
In a 1784 letter to his daughter he mocked the eagle as a bird of bad moral character and called the turkey a much more respectable bird, but he never proposed it as a national symbol.
Q22.I am a piece of plain string, I have no flavour, and my job is to keep the turkey's legs politely together in the oven. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Kitchen twine
Trussing makes the bird look neat and cook more evenly at the thigh, which is why some cooks skip it deliberately to get crispier legs.
Q23.I am stuck in the breast at the factory, I am made of plastic and metal, and I jump up when I think dinner is ready. Most cooks do not trust me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The pop-up timer
It works by a small plug of solder melting, and it is set to release well above 165°F — which is safe, but usually means the breast is already dry.
Q24.I am a turkey's alarm call, a single sharp note that means run, and my name is also what you do on a golf green. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A putt
Hunters call it putting. Hear it in the woods and the bird already knows exactly where you are.
Q25.A wild turkey spends all day feeding on the ground, then flies up into a tree every evening to sleep. Why not just sleep where the food is?Tap to reveal
Answer: Because the animals that hunt it work at night
Coyotes, foxes and bobcats hunt the ground after dark, so a branch is the safest bed available. Turkeys fly down again at first light.
What am I? Thanksgiving objects and traditions
These riddles describe things that only exist on one day of the year: the extra table leaf, the coats piled on a bed, the pie riding in somebody's lap. They need lived experience of an American Thanksgiving rather than cleverness, which makes them a much better fit for adults and teenagers than for young children.
They are also the most reliable laugh on the page, because the answer is usually something the room is looking at. If you are hosting, read these while people are still arriving and there is nothing to do. The Wednesday travel riddle and the 1863 one carry real facts, so they are useful if you want the round to teach something on the way past.
Q1.I live in a closet for eleven months of the year, and I am the only thing in the house that can make the dining table longer. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The table leaf
Named a leaf because it folds or drops like one. Most families discover theirs does not quite match the table any more.
Q2.I am a hand traced onto paper, with the thumb turned into a head and the fingers into feathers. I end up on the refrigerator door. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A hand turkey
Probably the single most-drawn image in American elementary schools, and the reason a whole generation draws turkeys wrong.
Q3.I am a woven horn spilling over with fruit that nobody ever eats, and I sit in the middle of the table blocking the view. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A cornucopia
The name is Latin for horn of plenty, and it comes from Greek myth long before it came to Thanksgiving centerpieces.
Q4.I am four stories tall, I am full of helium, and dozens of people hold me down with ropes while I move down a New York street. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A parade balloon
In the early years they released them at the end of the parade with a reward offered for their return. That stopped once they started tangling with aircraft.
Q5.I am set up in the next room. I am smaller, wobblier, and everybody sitting at me wishes they were somewhere else. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The kids' table
Almost every adult in the room has an opinion about the year they were finally promoted off it.
Q6.I am a little boat that has never touched water, and I sail around the table all evening carrying something brown. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The gravy boat
The narrow lip and wide belly exist so you can pour without dripping. Nobody has ever used one outside a holiday.
Q7.I am a clear plastic tube with a rubber bulb on the end. I suck liquid up from under the bird and squirt it back over the top. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The baster
Its other career is as a toy: no child has ever been left alone with one and not filled it with water.
Q8.I come out of the high cabinet once or twice a year, I am not allowed in the dishwasher, and my whole job is to make the meal feel like an occasion. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The good china
Often inherited, rarely replaced, and the reason somebody is doing the dishes by hand at eleven at night.
Q9.I grow taller every time the doorbell rings, and I live on the spare bed until it is time to go home. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The pile of coats
It also reliably swallows one glove per family per year.
Q10.I am the item of clothing that half the guests quietly choose on the fourth Thursday in November, and my defining feature is that I do not have a button. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Stretchy, elastic-waisted pants
The one riddle here that adults solve instantly and children find baffling.
Q11.I happen on the couch, in the middle of the afternoon, with the football still playing and one shoe off. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The post-dinner nap
Blame the size of the meal rather than the turkey: digesting a very large, carbohydrate-heavy plate makes anybody sleepy.
Q12.I ride for two hours on somebody's knees, held flat with both hands, and everybody in the car is told not to brake suddenly because of me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The pie being brought to dinner
A cardboard cake box with a base in it is worth more than any recipe when you are traveling with dessert.
Q13.I am filled with hot water and soap at nine in the evening, and the biggest pan in the house is left standing in me until morning because nobody can face it. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The kitchen sink
Soaking really does work, since warm water and time dissolve the stuck protein better than scrubbing does.
Q14.We are stacked by the back door at the end of the night, we are full, and almost none of us will ever find our way home to their owners. What are we?Tap to reveal
Answer: The leftover containers
The unwritten rule is that you send guests home with food in something you never expect to see again.
Q15.I am a small folded card with your name written on me, and I decide who you will be talking to for the next two hours. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: A place card
Hosts who use them are not being fussy. Seating is the cheapest way to keep two particular relatives apart.
Q16.I am the only one at the table who is not sitting on a chair, and I am hoping very hard that somebody's elbow slips. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The dog
Worth saying out loud at the table: cooked turkey bones splinter, and onions, grapes and anything with a lot of butter are all bad news for dogs.
Q17.I move around the table one person at a time. Nobody can eat until I have finished, and the teenagers dread me. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Going round the table saying what you are thankful for
It works far better if the host answers first and keeps it to one sentence.
Q18.I am the day before the feast, when the highways fill, the airports fill and every college student in America is on a bus. What day am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Wednesday before Thanksgiving
It is consistently one of the heaviest days on the roads. For air travel the record-setting day is usually the Sunday afterwards, when everybody goes home at once.
Q19.I am a football game in Detroit, and I have been played on this holiday almost every year since 1934. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Detroit Lions' Thanksgiving Day game
It started as a way to get people through the turnstiles, paused during World War II, and has run every year since 1945.
Q20.I come on the television straight after the parade, I last two hours, and I am the only sporting event of the day where everyone watching has a favorite before it starts. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The National Dog Show
It has followed the parade on NBC since 2002 and now draws audiences in the tens of millions, mostly from people who never move off the couch.
Q21.I start the moment the dishes are done, I involve a screen or a parking lot, and I am named after a color and a weekday. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Black Friday
The name began as Philadelphia police slang in the 1950s for the chaotic day after the holiday, and retailers reclaimed it decades later.
Q22.I am a sheet of paper taped to a cabinet door with times written next to every dish, and I am the only reason dinner happens at all. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: The cooking timeline
Write it backwards from the time you want to eat, not forwards from when you get up. The oven, not the cook, is the bottleneck.
Q23.I am the moment when a knife is picked up, the room goes quiet and everybody watches one person do something they only do once a year. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Carving the turkey
Take the whole breast off in one piece and slice it across the grain on the board. Carving on the bird, at the table, is how you end up with shreds.
Q24.I am the hour the host's alarm goes off, long before the guests, and the reason is sitting in the fridge weighing twenty pounds. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Five o'clock in the morning
A twenty-pound bird needs roughly four to five hours in the oven plus at least half an hour resting, so working back from a two o'clock dinner is brutal.
Q25.A president made me a national holiday in 1863, and Congress moved me to the fourth Thursday in 1941. What am I?Tap to reveal
Answer: Thanksgiving Day
Lincoln's proclamation set the last Thursday in November. Congress fixed it to the fourth Thursday after Franklin Roosevelt moved it earlier to lengthen the shopping season and half the country simply ignored him.
Hard Thanksgiving riddles and lateral-thinking puzzles for adults
These take time. Allow two or three minutes each, hand out pencil and paper for the timers, the measuring cups and the handshakes, and let people work in pairs — almost all of them are solved faster by two people arguing than by one person thinking.
The set mixes four kinds of puzzle: kitchen logic that has a single correct answer, classic lateral riddles dressed for November, two date puzzles you can verify on a calendar afterwards, and three questions about the 1621 harvest feast where the interesting part is what we do not know. If you only use one, use the oven-schedule riddle: it is the one where somebody at the table will get cross because they have actually had this problem.
Q1.Your oven holds one dish at a time. The turkey needs four hours and then has to rest before carving; the pie needs fifty minutes. Dinner is at five o'clock and you want both hot. When does the pie go in?Tap to reveal
Answer: The moment the turkey comes out
A turkey has to rest thirty to forty-five minutes anyway, so the pie bakes in the gap. Turkey out at 4:10, oven up to 375°F, pie in, pie out at 5:00 with the carving.
Q2.You have a whole pumpkin pie and you are allowed three straight cuts, right across, no stacking and no moving the pieces. What is the largest number of pieces you can end up with?Tap to reveal
Answer: Seven
Only if you abandon the idea that cuts go through the middle. One cut gives two, two crossing cuts give four, and a third cut placed to cross both of the others gives seven.
Q3.A turkey weighs twelve pounds plus half of its own weight. How much does it weigh?Tap to reveal
Answer: Twenty-four pounds
Half the weight is twelve pounds, so the whole is twenty-four. Nearly everybody says eighteen first, because the brain reads it as twelve plus half of twelve.
Q4.The green beans need exactly thirteen minutes. You have a five-minute timer and a nine-minute timer and no clock. How do you do it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Start both together. When the five runs out, put the beans on. When the nine runs out four minutes later, flip it and run the full nine again: four plus nine is thirteen.
The trick is that you are not measuring thirteen, you are measuring four and then nine. Most people try to reach thirteen in one go and get stuck.
Q5.Two mothers and two daughters sat down to dessert. Each one ate a slice of pumpkin pie and exactly three slices were eaten. How?Tap to reveal
Answer: There were only three people: a grandmother, her daughter and her granddaughter
The woman in the middle is a mother and a daughter at once. The same trick works with two fathers and two sons, so use only one version per evening.
Q6.Every guest at the party shook hands with every other guest exactly once, and there were forty-five handshakes in total. How many guests were there?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ten
Each of the ten shakes nine hands, and every handshake was counted twice, so ten times nine divided by two is forty-five.
Q7.Different pie, same rules, but now you may cut in any direction you like. Can you get eight equal pieces from three straight cuts?Tap to reveal
Answer: Yes: two cuts down through the middle at right angles, then one horizontal cut through the side of the pie
The four quarters become eight when you slice the whole pie in half through its thickness. Everybody objects that the bottom four are all crust, which is true and not a mathematical problem.
Q8.You have to get a live turkey, a dog and a sack of corn across a river. The boat holds you and one of the three. Left alone the dog will go after the turkey, and the turkey will eat the corn. How do you get all three across?Tap to reveal
Answer: Turkey over first. Come back empty. Take the corn over, and bring the turkey back with you. Leave the turkey, take the dog over, come back empty, then fetch the turkey.
The step nobody thinks of is bringing something back. As soon as a solver accepts that the boat can carry cargo in both directions, the puzzle falls apart in seconds.
Q9.A farmer took seventeen turkeys to market, and all but nine of them were sold. How many turkeys did he bring home?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nine
All but nine were sold, so nine were not. The arithmetic everybody starts doing — seventeen minus nine — is the trap.
Q10.Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November. Without looking at a calendar, what is the earliest date it can fall on, and the latest?Tap to reveal
Answer: The 22nd at the earliest and the 28th at the latest
If November 1st is a Thursday the fourth Thursday is the 22nd. Push the first Thursday back to the 7th and the fourth lands on the 28th. It cannot be the 29th, because then the first Thursday would be the 8th, which is impossible.
Q11.This year Thanksgiving falls on November 26th. Without a calendar, what day of the week is Christmas Day?Tap to reveal
Answer: Friday
November 26th is a Thursday, so December 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th are Thursdays too. Christmas Day is the 25th, the day after: Friday.
Q12.A recipe needs exactly four cups of stock. You have a three-cup measure, a five-cup measure, a full pot of stock and nothing marked with lines. How do you measure four?Tap to reveal
Answer: Fill the five, pour from it into the three until the three is full, and two cups are left in the five. Empty the three, tip the two cups into it, refill the five, then top up the three — which takes exactly one cup. Four cups remain in the five-cup measure.
Classic jug logic. It helps enormously to say out loud what is in each vessel after every pour, which is why pairs beat individuals on this one.
Q13.The turkey came out of the oven at exactly the right temperature and looked perfect, but every single guest complained the meat was dry. The cook had done nothing wrong to the bird in the oven. What did she do wrong?Tap to reveal
Answer: She carved it straight away
Cut immediately and the juices run out onto the board. Thirty to forty-five minutes of resting lets them settle back into the meat, and the bird stays hot the whole time.
Q14.Everybody says the dinner tastes wonderful. Grandpa says it tastes of almost nothing at all. He is eating the same food, he is not being rude, and he is not lying. What is going on?Tap to reveal
Answer: He has a cold, so he cannot smell
Most of what we call taste is smell. Block the nose and the tongue is left with sweet, salty, sour, bitter and savoury, which is not much of a Thanksgiving dinner.
Q15.There was almost certainly no pumpkin pie at the 1621 harvest feast at Plymouth, even though there were pumpkins. Give a reason.Tap to reveal
Answer: No oven, no wheat flour and no butter to make a crust with
The colonists had no proper baking oven that autumn, and the ingredients a pastry case needs were not available. Pumpkin was almost certainly eaten — stewed or roasted, not baked in pastry.
Q16.Name one food on the modern Thanksgiving table that was very probably at the 1621 feast, and one that certainly was not.Tap to reveal
Answer: Wildfowl and venison were there; mashed potatoes were not
Edward Winslow's short account mentions fowl and five deer brought by the Wampanoag. White potatoes were not grown in New England then, so the potatoes, the marshmallows and the cranberry sauce all arrived centuries later.
Q17.It is Tuesday evening. Thanksgiving dinner is on Thursday afternoon and there is a solid twenty-pound frozen turkey in the freezer. Fridge thawing takes about a day for every four to five pounds. Can you still serve it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Not in the fridge — but yes, in cold water
The fridge would need four or five days. A cold-water thaw takes roughly thirty minutes per pound, so about ten hours for twenty pounds, with the water changed every half hour and the bird cooked as soon as it is thawed.
Q18.Which is heavier: the turkey going into the oven, or the same turkey coming out?Tap to reveal
Answer: Going in
Roasting drives off water and melts fat into the pan. A bird typically loses something like a fifth of its weight, which is also why the gravy exists.
Q19.Pumpkin, tomato, cucumber, green bean, potato. Four of these have something in common that the fifth does not. Which is the odd one out?Tap to reveal
Answer: The potato
Botanically the other four are fruits: they grew from a flower and carry the seeds. A potato is a tuber, which is a swollen underground stem, so it is the only true vegetable in the list.
Q20.In some years November has five Thursdays, which means Thanksgiving is not the last Thursday of the month. What has to be true of November 1st for that to happen?Tap to reveal
Answer: November 1st must be a Wednesday or a Thursday
Thirty days gives four full weeks plus two extra days. Only if the first Thursday lands on the 1st or the 2nd does a fifth Thursday fit, and that means November 1st is a Thursday or a Wednesday. This is exactly the clash that led Congress to fix the date in 1941.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are these Thanksgiving riddles suitable for young children?
The first section is written for children aged about five to eight: every clue points at something a child has seen, and no answer depends on a pun. The puns in section two work from roughly seven upwards, since a child needs to hear two meanings in one word. The food, turkey and traditions sections suit ages ten and up or a mixed table with adults helping, and the last section is for adults. If you are running a round for small children, use section one plus five or six of the gentler puns and stop there.
How do I actually use these at the dinner table without it falling flat?
Do not read a long list. Pick twelve to twenty and hand them out between courses, or give one riddle to each guest to read aloud in turn, which spreads the attention around and gets quiet relatives talking. The best slot is the half-hour while the turkey is resting, when the food is nearly ready and nobody has anything to do. Let the youngest guests answer first before the adults shout, and drop any riddle that gets silence rather than trying to explain it.
Can I print these riddles for a classroom or a party?
Yes. The two buttons at the top of this page print the page as a clean sheet: one version with the riddles only, for handing out, and one with the answer key for whoever is reading them out. For a classroom, one section is about right for a single period — twenty-five riddles fills thirty to forty minutes once you allow for discussion and the inevitable argument about the wishbone.
What is the difference between a Thanksgiving riddle and a Thanksgiving trivia question?
A trivia question asks whether you already know something; a riddle gives you everything you need and hides it in the wording. That is why riddles work for mixed ages while trivia tends to reward whoever is oldest. If you want the other format, our Thanksgiving trivia questions and the kids' version are linked below, and the two mix well: a round of trivia, a round of riddles, then dessert.
Which riddles here are the hardest?
In the last section, the oven-schedule puzzle, the thirteen-minute timers and the four-cup measuring problem cause the most arguing, and the five-Thursdays question is the one people refuse to believe until they check a calendar. Outside that section, the hardest are the collective noun for turkeys, the turkey's alarm call, and the two letter puzzles in the pun round, which adults almost always miss because they are looking for an object instead of a letter.
Are the facts in the answers accurate?
Yes, and where historians disagree we say so rather than smoothing it over. A few specifics worth flagging: Benjamin Franklin never proposed the turkey as the national bird, the buckled Pilgrim hat is a nineteenth-century illustration rather than real clothing, tryptophan is not what makes people sleepy, and the 1621 harvest meal at Plymouth was not called Thanksgiving by the people who ate it. Earlier days of thanksgiving were held elsewhere in the Americas, and Plymouth's fame owes a great deal to nineteenth-century writers looking for a founding story. Several Native nations mark the day as a National Day of Mourning, which is worth knowing if the history comes up at your table.
Can I use these riddles in a school newsletter, on a worksheet or in a video?
Yes — they were written for this page and they are free to read, print and share, including in a classroom handout, a church bulletin or a family newsletter. A credit back to Trivio.NET is appreciated if you are publishing them online, and there are more riddle sets, printable sheets and a live 1v1 quiz game elsewhere on the site if you need something to follow them with.
