The answer is a clock.
Here’s the riddle: “I have a face and two hands, but no arms and no legs. What am I?”
This riddle sounds like it’s describing a very strange person — until you realize every single word is literal, just not about a body:
- “I have a face” — a clock’s dial is literally called its face. It’s not a nickname; that’s the word for it.
- “Two hands” — the pointers that tell the hour and the minute are literally called the clock’s hands. Again — the real term, not a metaphor.
- “But no arms and no legs” — of course not. It’s a clock. It hangs on the wall or stands on the mantel and has never needed either.
That’s the whole trick, and it’s a fair one: the riddle borrows the vocabulary of the human body, but every word belongs to the clock first. “Face” and “hands” aren’t clues pointing at a person — they’re the object’s actual part names, hiding in plain sight because your brain files them under “body” before it files them under “object.”
Did the clock tick for you straight away, or were you picturing something out of a fairy tale? Drop your first guess in the comments — and try tomorrow’s riddle on our page.
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