Riddles are Here!

If you’ve played FleetWit for awhile, you’re familiar with the complex visual puzzles we call Genius Questions. These are some of our favorite questions to write, because we can have a little more fun with the clues and can push our players to think creatively. However, for a long time Genius Questions were buried in a remote corner of our app, and you couldn’t play them unless you were willing to part with $1. Well, we didn’t think this was helping anybody, so we decided to give Genius Questions their very own app — welcome to Riddles by FleetWit!

What is Riddles by FleetWit?

Riddles by FleetWit is a new app devoted exclusively to Genius Questions, which are now called “Riddles”. The questions are essentially the same format as our old Genius Questions (see below for more details), but we’ve added a few new features. First of all, on each Riddle you can keep track of your previous guesses and see who else is playing that question. Secondly, there is a lot more information about the solved Riddles. When you go to a solved Riddle you can click “Show solution image” which gives you a step-by-step explanation of the correct answer. Finally, and most importantly, you can now guess for FREE! For each Riddle you get one free guess every 8 hours, with the option to watch an ad to earn an additional guess. And just like Genius Questions, the prize pool goes up the more people guess, so be sure to tell your friends!

What are the questions like?

Simply put, Riddles are visual puzzles. Each Riddle is a composite image featuring several different pictures all of which hint at a central theme or keyword. Most often the solution relates to members of a set. Looking at the examples below, in Genius Question VI each image references a winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture. Another common pattern for a Genius Question is a rebus. Genius Question VII works out to “Can” + “D” + “Land” or “Candyland”.

If the clues seem a little oblique, that’s because they are meant to be, and there are two main reasons for this. First, the more challenging a question is, the more people get to see it and have a crack at it. A picture of the U.S. Capitol Building in D.C. with a bunch of Harry Potter characters on it would be no fun because as soon as we posted the question someone would swoop in with “The Washington Wizards” and no one else would have a chance to play.

The second reason we ratchet up the difficulty level is because of our good friend Google. Assiduous trivia players use any tool at their disposal to uncover correct answers, and in this case that includes a heavy dose of Googling. We expect players will be using the internet to help solve Riddles, and so we create them with this in mind. Though we don’t shy away from intellectual somersaults, we reward you for going on the journey. Being the first one to correctly solve a Riddle can net you some top notch prizes.

Finally, a note about the answers. For questions where the solution is a concept rather than a word, we always make sure to include a variety of acceptable answers. For Genius Question I we had upwards of 50 acceptable answers, all different ways of expressing the idea of “Brands of Bathroom Accessories”. That said, as a general rule, we always make sure to accept a “minimum viable answer” for every question. So for Genius Question VI just “Best Picture” would have sufficed.

What are hints?

If a Riddle remains unsolved for a while, we will begin releasing hints to help you along. Hints will mostly cost a dollar or two and can be purchased using ApplePay. Generally, hints will take the form of a short phrase that points toward the overall theme or helps identify a specific element of the image. The more hints you have, the better chance of snagging the prize!

To give you a better sense of how Riddles work, below are the step-by-step solutions to some of our favorite classic Genius Questions, which should give you a better idea of how these kinds of questions operate:

Genius Question I

Solution:

Genius Question II

Solution:

Genius Question IV

Solution:

Genius Question V

Solution:

Genius Question VI

Solution:

Genius Question VII

Solution:

Genius Question X

Solution: