If you are bored and looking for a mentally-stimulating activity, you have come to the right place.
These mystery riddles will bring your inner detective to life and get you thinking hard as you try to figure out who the criminal is in each case.
However, if real-life action and mind-boggling games are more to your liking, consider booking an escape room instead.
Escape rooms are uniquely themed spaces that are full of clues, puzzles, challenges, secret locks, hidden doors, and whatnot. They are designed around unsolved mysteries and provide you with an opportunity to put your detective skills to the test.

Book an escape room today to see if you have got what it takes to be a real detective. Meanwhile, you can test your brain power with these riddles instead.

1. Unsolved Mysteries of the Serial Killer

An unidentified man in the local town kidnaps people and demands them to take one of the two pills that he offers. The pills look identical, but the killer claims that only one is poisonous. When a victim chooses a pill, the killer takes the remaining one. The victims always die after swallowing the tablet with water.
How does the killer manage to get the safe pill every time?

2. Breaking Out of the Jail

Think you are a champion at solving unsolved mysteries?
See if you can figure out the answer to this one!
Accused of stealing the farmer’s chickens, Jack is locked up in an empty room in the local jail. His cell has a dirt floor and is completely void of any accessories except for a shovel. There is a window overlooking the hills outside. Jack is determined to break out and prove his innocence, but the window is too high to reach.
How can he escape?
Note that digging a tunnel is not a feasible option because the ground beneath the dirt is rock hard. Jack doesn’t have the energy to dig through it as he is deprived of food and water.

3. The Stolen Bracelet

The stolen diamond bracelet

A woman named Cathy goes to the police claiming that someone broke into her house and stole her diamond bracelet while she was at work. The policemen investigate the crime scene and notice that the bedroom window is broken. There are muddy footprints all across the bedroom floor. However, the room is otherwise neat and organized.
The following day, Cathy is arrested for fraud. Can you figure out why?

4. The Old Woman Who Lived Alone

An elderly woman lived alone in her house by the suburbs. She rarely left the house and knew only a few people. One Friday morning, the mailman called out for the woman but didn’t receive a prompt answer as usual. Upon peeking in through the window, the mailman realized that the woman was murdered. The police investigated the house and found Tuesday’s newspaper by the dead body. Also, by the door outside, there were three unopened bottles of milk, one of which had gone bad.
The police arrested the killer the very next day. How did they figure out so quickly?
Check the answer key below to see if you are just as good at solving unsolved mysteries.

5. Friend Turned Foe

Amy goes to her friend, Maria's house, on a wintry evening only to find her dead. When the police learn about the incident, they question Amy how she found out. Amy says that she knocked on the door and rang the bell repeatedly. Since the light was on in one of the rooms, Amy knew Maria must be home and decided to look through the window.
The windows were frozen, so she breathed on the iced glass, and that's when she noticed Maria’s body on the floor.
The police suspect Amy is the murderer. Are they correct? Or is it just one of those riddles with no definite answer?

6. Deadly Chemicals

A renowned chemist is found dead in his lab. There is no clear evidence except a piece of paper lying by the body. The paper is blank other than the name of five elements scrawled across it hastily:

Nickel
Carbon
Oxygen
Lanthanum
Sulfur

The guard reported that three people visited the chemist that day – his sister, Lanaya, his colleague, Nicolas, and his wife, Teresa.
The criminal was arrested immediately. Who was it?

7. The Murder at High School

Solving the mystery murder at high school

The science teacher at Jefferson High School is murdered on the first day of the academic year. The police narrow down the suspects to four members of the school – the gardener, the coach, the math teacher, and the principal. However, they all have alibis:

The gardener says he was trimming the bushes
The coach says he was playing basketball
The math teacher says he was conducting a mid-year test
The principal says he was in a meeting

The police had no trouble in arresting the person guilty of the crime. Who do you think was the murderer?

Answers

The riddle is easy to solve if you look at it from a different angle. As it turns out, the poison is not in the pills but in the glass of water that the victim drinks.
Jack needs to use the shovel to make a pile of dirt that helps him reach the window. He can then climb on the pile and easily escape the cell.
Cathy was convicted of fraud because the bedroom window was broken from the inside. If somebody had broken in from the outside, there would have been glass pieces on the bedroom floor. Also, the room was perfectly tidy, which means the so-called thief didn’t search for items and knew exactly where the bracelet was.
The mailman killed the old woman because the newspapers for Wednesday and Thursday weren’t found in or outside the house. This means he knew there would be no one to read them. (He tried to trick the police by reporting the crime himself – but turns out he isn’t too smart at creating riddles after all)
Amy can’t possibly get a clear view of the room from outside. This is because it’s hard to unfreeze an iced glass by breathing as its opposite surface is usually icy too.
The list of chemicals had a clue – their abbreviations spell out the murderer’s name, Ni-C-O-La-S.
The police arrested the math teacher because, apparently, he was taking a 'mid-year' test on the first day of school.

So, how many answers did you get right?

If you enjoyed solving these mystery riddles, we bet you would love playing escape games too.

American Escape Room offers you an incredible platform to experience the thrill of playing detective in real life.

Get in touch with us today to learn more!