Confusing Questions

200 Confusing Questions To Blow Your Mind

It’s important to ask questions–even if they sound ridiculous. Some questions don’t have any real answers. And some of them are tricks that are meant to confuse you. Whether you’re interested in riddles or unanswerable questions, here are some confusing questions: 

Confusing Questions With No Real Answer 

two women smiling while standing near wall
Unsplash / NeONBRAND

Here are some mind-blowing questions to ask your family and friends:

  1. When did time begin?
  2. Are children who act in R-rated movies allowed to watch the film when it’s done?
  3. Do you consider eyebrows facial hair?
  4. If you were shorter than someone, would it be possible to talk down to them?
  5. What hair color do they put in bald people’s driver’s licenses?
  6. Do prison buses have emergency exits?
  7. Can you stand backward on a flight of stairs?
  8. Did we invent math or did we discover it?
  9. Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?
  10. Do we have free will or is everything predestined?

Confusing Questions

These questions would be funny if they weren’t so confusing:

  1. Is there life after death?
  2. What is the goal of humanity?
  3. What age should a person be considered old enough to die of old age?
  4. How do you know you’re not crazy and just hallucinating your whole life?
  5. To what degree have you been able to control the course that your life has taken?
  6. Is the Earth alive?
  7. Do they bury people with their braces still on or do they remove them?
  8. Why did they put the word ‘dictionary’ in the dictionary?
  9. What do you call a fly without its wings?
  10. Why do we cook bacon and bake cookies?

Mindblowing Questions To Make You Think

smiling woman standing beside sunflowers
Unsplash / Brooke Cagle

If you’re confused by these questions, you’re not alone. Although there is no real answer, they’re fun to think about!

  1. How do you grow a seedless fruit?
  2. If tomatoes are a fruit, is ketchup considered a smoothie?
  3. Is it possible to know what is truly good and what is evil?
  4. If we learn and improve from our mistakes, why are we so afraid to make mistakes?
  5. Do you ever really do anything out of your own conscious choice, or are we always controlled by some external stimulation or motive?
  6. If everyone says that life is unfair, doesn’t that mean that life is fair?
  7. How long will you be remembered after the day that you die?
  8. Which orange came first – the fruit or the color?
  9. You had a dream that none of your dreams would come true. And you woke up and had none of your real-life dreams come true. Would that be a dream come true?
  10. What is ‘god’?

Mind Blowing, Confusing Questions

Make sure to quiz your family and friends on these questions:

  1. If the early bird gets the worm, why do good things come to those who wait?
  2. Who decided what’s right and wrong?
  3. If you told someone to ‘be a leader and not a follower’, wouldn’t they become a follower by following your advice?
  4. What is the purpose of setting goals if we all die anyway?
  5. What is freedom and does it really exist?
  6. If you hate haters, does that make you a hater and will you hate yourself?
  7. What would happen if Pinocchio said ‘My nose will grow now’?
  8. If the fountain of youth can make you live forever, can you drown in it and still die?
  9. Isn’t it that when you wait for the waiter to come back with your order, you become the waiter in the process?
  10. When you buy something that’s made in China while you’re in China, does it still have the made in China tag?

Random, Interesting Questions

woman in white crew neck t-shirt covering her face with her hand
Unsplash / Mathilde Langevin

Here are some confusing questions that have no real answer. They might hurt your brain, so proceed with caution:

  1. If the number 2 pencil is the most popular, why is it number 2?
  2. Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?
  3. If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
  4. What was the first man to milk a cow trying to do?
  5. If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, will we ever know it?
  6. Do caterpillars know that they’re going to be butterflies or do they build the cocoon not knowing what will happen?
  7. If Cinderella’s shoe fit her perfectly, then why did it fall off?
  8. Who taught the first ever teacher?
  9. If nothing is impossible, then would it be possible for something to be impossible?
  10. Why do noses run but feet smell?

Confusing Questions To Ask Others

These questions are going to keep you up all night long.

  1. If God sneezed, what would you say?
  2. When all is said and done, would you have said more than you have done?
  3. If a tree fell in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
  4. How did the person who invented the calendar know what day it was?
  5. If life is so short, why do we do things that we don’t like and like so many things that we don’t do?
  6. Why did we decide to give February just 28 days when lots of other months have 31 days? Couldn’t we have just taken some of the 31st days from other months and added them to February?
  7. If revenge is a dish that’s best served cold, and revenge is sweet, then is revenge ice cream?
  8. Why are they called buildings if they’re already built?
  9. Why do they say that you have a cold when your temperature goes up?
  10. If you drop your soap on the floor, does the floor become clean or does the soap become dirty?

Random, Fun Questions

woman in white, brown, and black striped spaghetti strap top
Unsplash / Chermiti Mohamed

Maybe you can come up with an answer to these random questions. Or maybe there’s no good way to answer them. Either way, these mind blowing questions are going to make you think:

  1. Which came first – the chicken or the egg?
  2. What makes you, you?
  3. Why are you here at this very moment in your life?
  4. Did you arrive at this point in your life because you willed it or because you were destined to be here?
  5. How do you know that you see colors the same way that another person sees them? For instance, what if what’s red to you is blue to them, but they still call it red?
  6. Is your answer to this question ‘no’?
  7. In the word ‘scent’, which letter is silent? S or C?
  8. Isn’t the word ‘queue’ just the letter Q followed by four silent letters?
  9. What would a room made of mirrors look like if there was nothing inside that room to create a reflection?
  10. If you had fun while you were wasting time, can you still say that you wasted time?

Funny, Confusing Questions

Here are a few more questions that will mess with your mind:

  1. Which armrest is yours in the movie theater?
  2. Do dentists go to other dentists or do they treat their own dental care problems?
  3. How far east do you have to go before you start going west?
  4. You dug a hole that went through the center of the earth and you jumped through. Would you be falling or floating upwards?
  5. Where do they put the bible in libraries – fiction or non-fiction section?
  6. What happens when an immovable object meets an unstoppable force?
  7. What would happen to the world’s oceans if every person on Earth jumped into the water at the same time?
  8. When does it stop being partly sunny and start to become partly cloudy?
  9. Why is vanilla ice cream white when vanilla itself is brown?
  10. Was there ever a time when nothing existed or has something always been in existence?

More Confusing Questions That Make You Think

woman in white tank top and blue denim jeans
Unsplash / Jason Yoder

Here are some more confusing questions that will make you laugh out loud:

  1. If a cyclops were to close its eye, is it winking or blinking?
  2. Is a body transplant just the same as a brain transplant?
  3. What is the color of a mirror?
  4. Are soul mates a real thing?
  5. If you’re trying to fail and you succeed, did you fail or did you succeed?
  6. How is it possible that the world is in debt?
  7. If you expect the unexpected, doesn’t that make the unexpected expected?
  8. How important do you have to be to be considered assassinated and not just murdered?
  9. Can blind people dream?
  10. Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

Confusing Questions For Children And Adults

These questions will confuse you, no matter how old you are:

  1. If we need to follow rules at all costs, then why do we make exceptions to these rules?
  2. When they say that something is ‘new and improved’, how can it be improved if it’s new? What is it improving on?
  3. Why is the objective of golf to play the least amount of golf?
  4. If a vampire bites a zombie, does the zombie become a vampire or does the vampire become a zombie?
  5. If God created Adam and Eve, did they have belly buttons?
  6. Why do we hit our hands together when we like something? 
  7. Why do we base our age on the number of times we went around a burning ball of gas?
  8. When you get to heaven, do you look like you do at the age that you die?
  9. Why do people say that they ‘slept like a baby’ if they slept through the night when babies are known for not sleeping?
  10. Why is the alphabetical order that way? Who said that that’s the order that it had to be?

Questions That Will Make You Confused

woman sitting on black soil during daytime
Unsplash / Brooke Cagle

Here are some random thoughts you won’t be able to stop thinking about.

  1. Why is Goofy considered a person and Pluto considered a pet when they’re both dogs anyway?
  2. Isn’t good health just a slower rate at which to die?
  3. What do people who are born deaf hear when they think?
  4. How far up do bald people go when they wash their face?
  5. If a person dies at sea and only their arm is recovered, how would he be displayed in a casket? Does it need to be a full-sized casket?
  6. A baby’s butt pops out of its mother at 11:59 PM. The head comes out at 12:01 AM. What day will the baby be declared to be born on?
  7. What do they call french kissing in France?
  8. If killing people is wrong, then why do we kill people that kill people?
  9. If you punch yourself and it hurts, are you weak or are you strong?
  10. Take a ship and replace all of its parts until none of the original parts are intact anymore. Is it the same ship or a completely different ship?
  11. What shape is your field of vision?
  12. If you describe something as indescribable, haven’t you already described it?
  13. Are we living or slowly dying?
  14. Is there an end to the universe, or does it just keep going?
  15. Why does anything exist?
  16. What is the purpose and meaning of time?
  17. Do our human accomplishments have a long-term, universal significance, or when the world ends, do we all end with it, including what we’ve achieved?
  18. Why do people have to die?
  19. Is it really possible to experience anything objectively?
  20. What are dreams?

Trick Questions To Make You Think

These questions actually do have an answer. However, it might be hard for you to guess the solution!

  1. What are two things you can never eat for breakfast? Lunch and dinner.
  2. What is always coming but never arrives? Tomorrow.
  3. What is it that lives if it is fed, and dies if you give it a drink? Fire.
  4. What never asks a question but gets answered all the time? Your cellphone.
  5. What word would you use to describe a man who does not have all his fingers on one hand? Normal, because people usually have half their fingers on one hand.
  6. What goes up but never ever comes down? Your age.
  7. What gets wetter the more it dries? A towel.
  8. What can one catch that is not thrown? A cold.
  9. If you have one, you want to share it. But once you share it, you do not have it. What is it? A secret.
  10. What starts with “e” and ends with “e” but only has one letter in it? An envelope.
  11. If a plane crashes on the border between the United States and Canada, where do they bury the survivors? Survivors aren’t buried!
  12. How can a girl go 25 days without sleep? She sleeps at night.
  13. If it takes eight men ten hours to build a wall, how long would it take four men? No time, because the wall is already built.
  14. You spot a boat full of people but there isn’t a single person on board. How is that possible? Everyone on board is married.
  15. If you spell “sit in the tub” s-o-a-k, and you spell “a funny story” j-o-k-e, how do you spell “the white of an egg”? E-G-G W-H-I-T-E.
  16. A cowboy rode into town on Friday. He stayed in town for three days and rode out on Friday. How is that possible? His horse is named Friday.
  17. Imagine you’re in a room that’s filling up with water quickly. There are no windows or doors. How do you get out? Stop imagining.
  18. What goes up and down, but always remains in the same place? Stairs.
  19. Everyone in the world needs it, but they usually give it without taking it. What is it? Advice.
  20. What happened when the wheel was invented? It caused a revolution.
  21. Is it legal for a man to marry his widow’s sister? No, but since he is dead it would be hard to do so.
  22. What two keys can’t open any door? A monkey and a donkey.
  23. If Mrs. John’s one-story house is decorated completely in pink, with the walls, carpet, and furniture all shades of pink, what color are the stairs? There are no stairs.
  24. What will you actually find at the end of every rainbow? The letter ‘W’.
  25. A young boy was rushed to the hospital emergency room, but the ER doctor saw the boy and refused to operate. “This boy is my son,” the doctor said. But the doctor wasn’t the boy’s father. How could this be? The doctor was the boy’s mom.
  26. An electric train is moving north at 100mph. A wind is blowing to the west at 10mph. Which way does the smoke blow? An electric train has no smoke.
  27. I start out tall, but the longer I stand, the shorter I grow. What am I? A candle.
  28. How was it possible that every single person in an airplane crash died, but two people survived? The two survivors were married.
  29. How many seconds are there in a year? Twelve. January 2nd, February 2nd, March 2nd, etc.
  30. What breaks and never falls, and what falls and never breaks? Day breaks and night falls.
  31. What can run but not walk? Rain drops.
  32. Some months have 31 days, others have 30 days, but how many have 28 days? All 12.
  33. How could a man go outside in the pouring rain without protection, and not have a hair on his head get wet? He is bald.
  34. Thanks to me, you can see straight through the wall. What am I? A window.
  35. “The attorney is my brother,” testified the accountant. But the attorney testified he did not have a brother. Who is lying? Neither one, because the accountant was his sister.
  36. Which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks? Neither. They both weigh exactly one pound.
  37. Uncle Bill’s farm had a terrible storm and all but seven sheep were killed. How many sheep are still alive? Seven.
  38. What has a face and two hands, but no arms or legs? A clock.
  39. How can the pocket of your pants be empty, but still have something in it? When the something is a hole.
  40. What do you call a woman who knows where her husband is all the time? A widow.
  41. What has a thumb and four fingers but isn’t actually alive? A glove.
  42. What do you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with? A chair, a bed, and a toothbrush.
  43. How did the boy kick his soccer ball ten feet, and then have it come back to him on its own? He kicked it up.
  44. If you have a bowl with six apples and you take away four, how many do you have? The four you took.
  45. A girl fell off a 50-foot ladder but didn’t get hurt. Why? She fell off the bottom step.
  46. What can be broken but never held? A promise.
  47. How do you make the number one disappear? Add a ‘G’ and it’s gone!
  48. You only have one match and enter a dark room containing an oil lamp. There’s also some kindling wood, and a newspaper. Which would you light first? The match.
  49. What’s greater than God and more evil than the devil. Rich people want it, poor people have it. And if you eat it, you’ll die? Nothing.
  50. What word is spelled incorrectly in every single dictionary? Incorrectly.

More Trick Questions For Friends And Family

These trick questions aren’t going to be easy to answer. But you can figure them out!

  1. What kind of tree can you carry in your hand? A palm.
  2. A woman pushes her car to a hotel and then proceeds to tell the owner that she is bankrupt. Why? She is playing Monopoly.
  3. If Mr Smith’s peacock lays an egg in Mr Jones’ yard, who owns the egg? Peacocks don’t lay eggs.
  4. How many times can you subtract 10 from 100? Once. Next time you would be subtracting 10 from 90.
  5. Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb? No one. Ulysses Grant is interred in Grant’s tomb but not buried.
  6. Before Mount Everest was discovered, what was the tallest mountain on Earth? Mount Everest.
  7. If the vice president were to die, who is supposed to be president? The President.
  8. A 10 foot rope ladder hangs over the side of a boat with the bottom rung on the surface of the water. The rungs are one foot apart, and the tide goes up at the rate of 6 inches per hour. How long will it be until three rungs are covered? Never. The boat rises as the tide goes up.
  9. A truck driver is going down a one way street the wrong way, and passes at least ten cops. Why is he not caught? Because he was not driving! He’s walking on the sidewalk.
  10. A doctor gives you 3 pills and tells you to take one pill every half hour. How long would it take before all the pills had been taken? 1 hour! Take the 1st pill right away, half an hour later take the 2nd and half an hour after that the 3rd.
  11. Name the most recent year in which New Year’s came before Christmas. This year. New Year’s always comes before Christmas of the same year.
  12. The teacher asked the two girls who looked exactly like the following questions: a.) Are you from the same family? b.) Do you have the same parents? c.) Were you born on the same day? They answered truthfully “yes” to those questions, and yet told the truth when they indicated they were not twins. How can this be? They were triplets.
  13. What can you hold without touching it at all? A conversation.
  14. What has a head, a tail, but does not have a body? A coin.
  15. I’m light as a feather, but not even the strongest girl can hold me for more than 5 minutes. What am I? Breath.
  16. A man lives on the 100th floor of an apartment building. On rainy days he rides the elevator all the way up. However, on sunny days, he goes half way and takes the stairs the rest of the way. Why? The man is short and can only reach the button for the 50th floor on the elevator. On rainy days, he uses his umbrella handle.
  17. Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday? Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
  18. Robert, my neighbor, a forty-five-year-old blacksmith is seven feet tall, and eats all day long. What does he weigh? Iron.
  19. What gets sharper the more you use it? Your brain.
  20. There are three important rooms in a house. The first one is filled with money. Another is filled with important papers. The third one is filled with jewelry. One day all of these rooms burst into fire. Which room did the policemen put out the fire in first? None of them, because policemen do not put out fires; firemen do.
  21. What occurs once in a minute, twice in a moment, and never in one thousand years? The letter M.
  22. What is the maximum number of times a single page of a newspaper can be folded in half by hand? Once.
  23. I’m so fragile that if you say my name, you’ll break me. What am I? Silence.
  24. What can you make that no one—not even you—can see? Noise.
  25. On a Sunday morning, the oldest girl in a family was murdered. The father was reading the paper, the mother was in the kitchen cooking breakfast, and the girl’s brother was playing video games. Uncle George was visiting and was out getting the mail. Who murdered the girl? Uncle George. Mail isn’t delivered on Sundays.
  26. What’s full of holes but can still hold liquid? A sponge.
  27. What two words, when combined, hold the most letters? Post Office.
  28. Why are 1968 pennies worth more than 1967 pennies? Because there is one more penny in 1968 pennies than in 1967 pennies.
  29. What belongs to you but gets used by everyone else more than you? Your name.
  30. If a monkey, a squirrel, and a bird are racing to the top of a coconut tree, who will get the banana first? None, coconut trees don’t grow bananas.
  31. I have teeth but can’t eat. What am I? A comb.
  32. First you throw away my outside and cook the inside. Then you eat my outside and throw away my inside. What am I? Corn on the cob. Because you throw away the husk, cook the corn. Then you eat the kernels, and throw away the cob.
  33. What 5-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it? Short.
  34. There are eight men sitting on a couch. Three legs break and six men leave. How many legs are remaining? Five; the legs of the two remaining men and the remaining couch leg.
  35. If ten birds are sitting in a tree and a hunter shoots one, how many birds are left in the tree? None, because after one bird got shot, the rest flew away.
  36. What runs, but never walks. Murmurs, but never talks. Has a bed, but never sleeps. And has a mouth, but never eats? A river.
  37. What has 4 wheels and flies? A garbage truck.
  38. What bird can lift the most weight? A crane.
  39. You are driving a bus. When you begin your route, there is an old woman named Mrs. Smith and a young boy named Raymond are on the bus. At the first stop, the old woman leaves, and a salesman, named Ed, enters. At the next stop, Jack and his sister Jill get on, as well as three women with shopping bags. The bus travels fifteen minutes, then stops and Raymond gets off and a man and his wife get on. Next, a woman with a bird in a cage gets on the bus. What is the name of the bus driver? It’s you!
  40. Why did the woman run around her bed at night? To catch up on her sleep.
  41. What goes up as soon as the rain comes down? An umbrella.
  42. How much dirt is there in a hole that is 3 feet deep, 6 feet long, and 4 feet wide? None, because a hole does not have any dirt inside.
  43. The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I? Footprints.
  44. A man dressed in all black is walking down a country lane. Suddenly, a large black car with no lights on comes around the corner and screeches to a halt. How did the car’s driver know he was there? It was daytime.
  45. You sit a cup on the table facing south while you are on the north side of the table. On which side is the cup’s handle? No matter which way the cup is turned, the handle is always on the outside.
  46. Two mothers and two daughters went out to eat, everyone ate one slice of pizza, yet only three slices were eaten. How’s that possible? The group included a grandmother, her daughter and her daughter’s daughter.
  47. I am an odd number. Take away one letter and I become even. What number am I? Seven (take away the ‘s’ and it becomes ‘even’).
  48. Who is bigger, Mr. Bigger, Mrs. Bigger, or their baby? The baby, since he is a little Bigger.
  49. How many legs does an elephant have if you count his trunk as a leg? Four, because calling the elephant’s trunk a leg does not make it one.
  50. I have all the knowledge you have. But I’m so small, you can hold me in your fist. What am I? Your brain.

January Nelson is a writer, editor, and dreamer. She writes about astrology, games, love, relationships, and entertainment. January graduated with an English and Literature degree from Columbia University.