Need help testing some riddles

[Son of a Beach]

I’ve been running my family through a dungeons and dragons campaign, which I’ve been making up and which has been a lot of fun. Yes, we are a family of geeks.

In one of the last parts of the campaign, there is a room (actually a cavern that is part of a deep cave system) where the exit door has three bolts which can only be opened by solving the three riddles which are engraved next to the bolts.

I’ve made up three riddles, but I would like to test them to make sure that they are actually solvable (not a very fun game if they spend ages stuck in a locked room failing to solve the riddles). I’m hoping that they will require a little bit of thinking but can be solved without taking too long. Hopefully, a couple of false-guesses along the way for at least one of them.

Please tell me what you think are the answers to these three riddles, and let me know how difficult it was, and how long it took you to figure them out.

I’m widespread at night
Before dawn I take flight
In this room I was here
Until you appeared
The more there is of me
The less of me you will see

Macaroni, apple, recipe, napkin
Three, one, two, two

I can be broken by hammer or bird
Nothing can fix me; I cannot be heard
When breaking me is ended
I will be mended

[north-north-west]

#3 = silence?

Less than a minute for this one.

Last edited by north-north-west on Sat 11 Jan, 2025 6:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[north-north-west]

#2 = Macarena.

That one is neat. Took maybe three or four minutes, with a few failures along the way.
Still working on #1.

[MrWalker]

#3 = silence?

Less than a minute for this one.

#3 was too obvious, and took me less than a minute too.
I can understand the answer to #2 now that it's pointed out, but I had no idea, and would probably never get it on my own.
#1 baffles me completely. It seems to be the same type as #3, but I can't see what fits all the clues.

[ribuck]

1 is darkness?

[Son of a Beach]

Cool. You figured them all out between you. Yes:

Darkness, Macarena, Silence.

Thank you for having a go to help me out. And well done for solving them!

Sounds like they are mostly suitable difficulty (not too hard, I hope).

Now I hope they work for my family. Not sure when we will get to it.

The fun part is that after they figure them out, they need to ‘do’ the answers, not just say them or write them. Ie:

Extinguish their torches (in the game), perform the Macarena (for real) and be silent (for real). (Not all at the same time!)

[north-north-west]

See,, darkness is wrong for #1, because a person being in a cave or room does not mean there is also light. You need to tweak that bit.

[MrWalker]

See,, darkness is wrong for #1, because a person being in a cave or room does not mean there is also light. You need to tweak that bit.

I agree. I read the first two lines and immediately thought of darkness, but it clearly was not right for the rest of the poem.
You could just use those first two lines.

[Tortoise]

I agree. I read the first two lines and immediately thought of darkness, but it clearly was not right for the rest of the poem.

I wondered about that. But then I thought the person would have opened the door to go into the room, presumably not from a place with no light. Maybe there's a better word than 'appeared'?

Last edited by Tortoise on Sun 12 Jan, 2025 11:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Son of a Beach]

Oh my goodness. And I thought I was pedantic!

Those are fair comments though. I’ll consider if there is some way of improving the first one. Maybe I should keep the first two lines and the last two lines and delete the middle two lines. Would that fit ok?

Technically, they can’t read the riddle engraving on the door without light, so they must have brought light with them. But this is also getting pedantic.

[Son of a Beach]

New version of #1:

I’m widespread at night
Before dawn I take flight
The more of me
The less you'll see

Last edited by Son of a Beach on Mon 13 Jan, 2025 1:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.

[Tortoise]

Works for me.

[north-north-west]

Yes, that's much better.

It's not just pedantry. As an occasional caver and all-round weirdo, that's how the brain works.

[Son of a Beach]

PS. I also made a minor changes to the last two lines, which (I think) improves the logic and the rhythm.

[MrWalker]

PS. I also made a minor changes to the last two lines, which (I think) improves the logic and the rhythm.

If I was being pedantic I would say that the last two lines are now a bit too short.
But I can see that they didn't quite scan in the original, so it is possibly an improvement.

Is there a problem that riddles #1 and #3 are a similar type, so anyone who gets one will immediately get the other?

[Son of a Beach]

PS. I also made a minor changes to the last two lines, which (I think) improves the logic and the rhythm.

If I was being pedantic I would say that the last two lines are now a bit too short.
But I can see that they didn't quite scan in the original, so it is possibly an improvement.

Is there a problem that riddles #1 and #3 are a similar type, so anyone who gets one will immediately get the other?

All reasonable feedback. Thanks.

No, it should not be a problem that they are similar. I want these to be easy (and the Macarena one will be easy to my family of dancing girls, I'm guessing). My main concern (when I first posted here) was that they might be too difficult. I want them to be solved fairly quickly, but hopefully not immediately, and hopefully with a bit of discussion amongst the group to get the results.

[Son of a Beach]

Here's what the adventuring characters in the game will be confronted with (below). Although this is the translated version. There is also a foreign-language version that only one of them will be able to read, and they will need to translate it for the others.

I've swapped #3 and #1 so that if they do them all in order, they will extinguish their torches at the end instead of at the beginning, meaning less mucking about in the dark.

Riddle-Locked Door (translated)

[Son of a Beach]

We finally got around to playing through the remainder of this D&D campaign yesterday. The Riddle Room worked out quite well.

They got 'Darkness' fairly quickly. But then they got stuck for a bit on the other two.

After a while, one of them said "silence" as part of conversation as a complete coincidence, which then provided opportunity for the non-playing character (played by myself) to pick up on that as being the possible answer, which of course they all agreed with.

The 'Macarena' had them stumped for quite some time, which surprised me. I was just at the point where I was about to use the non-playing character to help them out again (with his knowledge of various lore about ancient tribal dances) when I could see one of them starting to write "Mac...", at which point I knew she was about to solve it. A few seconds later, she cracked up laughing... and the others gave a big sigh.

Then I was asked, "So do we really have to all do the Macarena silently in the dark???".

"Yep, you sure do!".

It was so funny... to me, at least. Had to be there, I guess.

Last edited by Son of a Beach on Mon 10 Feb, 2025 11:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Tortoise]

Thanks for the update, SoaB. I'm smiling just thinking about it.

[Son of a Beach]

In case anyone is interested, this D&D campaign (along with another smaller campaign) is now available for any other DM who would like to use it at:

https://nik.nixanz.com/dnd/

Happy for any feedback and constructive criticism (which may or may not be ignored).

(These are the first two D&D campaigns I've written since the exceedingly basic ones I wrote when I was a teenager, so go easy on me.)

• The Lost Orbs of Thonos - a short, simple two-shot campaign
• Pursuit of the Severed Map - a 6 to 8 session campaign (of ~2 hours per session) which includes the riddles which started this thread