Three-word riddles: method

What it measures

What it is: a daily word-riddle game based on a research task used to study convergent thinking and insight. What it isn't: a normed measure of creativity; our riddles have no published norms.

Procedure

Each UTC day has 5 riddles from a fixed schedule (day 1 = 4 November 2026), the same for everyone in one language, ordered by author-assigned difficulty 1, 1, 2, 2, 3. Each riddle shows three cue words; the answer forms a compound word or common phrase with each. The player types guesses and presses Check; wrong guesses are signalled at once, and any number of guesses (up to 30) is allowed within 45 s, or the player can skip. Guesses are compared after Unicode normalization and lower-casing, with spaces, hyphens, apostrophes and full stops removed; some riddles accept a plural or another spelling, and German also accepts ae, oe, ue, ss for umlauts and sharp s. The page checks guesses against salted hashes of the accepted answers, and the server checks every guess again when scoring. After the fifth riddle the answers and the three compounds are shown. Yesterday's set can still be finished after midnight UTC.

Parameters

Scoring

Primary metric: number of riddles solved out of 5. A riddle counts as solved at its first right guess within the time. Also reported: solve time per riddle and mean solve time of solved riddles. 'Today's players' shows the day's average and the percentage of players with a lower score (ties count half), once at least 20 players have played that day in the same language; replays are not counted. Typed guesses are not stored, only their number and the solve times.

Valid-run rules

The riddles must match the day's set in order, and only today's or yesterday's set (UTC) can be scored. Guesses after 46.5 s do not count. Replays are stored but excluded from today's players. Every scored run is stored with its input device class (touch, mouse, keyboard), page language, scorer version and runner-config hash. Quality flags (for example many runs from one connection within an hour, a missing visitor id, an automated browser, impossibly fast answers) and earlier attempts by the same visitor, account or connection are recorded with the row. Such runs are kept, but they are left out of any comparison with other players. Flags never change the player's own result.

Differences from the classic task

Bowden and Jung-Beeman's normed set has 144 problems with solution rates at fixed time limits (2 to 30 s). Here the riddles are our own, five a day, with 45 s each, unlimited guesses and author-assigned difficulty.

Limitations

Five riddles a day is a small sample. Vocabulary, regional language use and familiarity with compound words strongly affect the score. There are no norms. Not a measure of overall creativity; no clinical use.

Languages and review status

Native riddle banks written for English and German only; the page is offered only in these two languages. Instructions follow the page language.