Puzzling your way through Advent with 25 tricky, fun and varied puzzles. These Advent calendar riddles for adults are a colourful mix of fun and tricky Christmas puzzles of many different puzzle types. Including a free eyecatching printable!
The world is infected with a very special fever: puzzle fever! And that also applies to me, my family and many of my friends. Do you know when you suddenly get the urge for an Exit Puzzle or an Escape Game and you start a bulk purchase? Greatime is my witness, Exit Puzzle, Escape Games live on location or as an Exit Game in all possible variations at home and puzzle classics simply sweeten life. So it makes perfect sense to try my hand at a riddle Advent calendar with beautifully designed puzzle cards to print out.
Every year I make one or more Advent calendars – or I think of a new, special filling and get a matching Advent calendar out of the Christmas box. This year, the Advent calendar riddles for adults are part of the filling. To sweeten the puzzle, each day comes with nerve food, a bag of tea or a funny or nice little something to go with the puzzle. The original centrepiece is clearly my lovingly self-designed riddle cards. Of course, the Advent calendar riddles for adults also work on their own – without a sweet addition.
The Advent Calendar Riddle Types and Matching DIY Advent Calendars

These Advent calendar riddles for adults are a mixture of brainteasers, cryptograms, acrostics, crossword puzzles and logic puzzles. Of course, they are suitable for the Advent and Christmas season! Simply print out the free Advent calendar riddle printable and put it in a fillable Advent calendar.
The Advent calendar filling is ready – the Advent calendar too? Take a look at the DIY instructions for Advent calendars on Greatime. Some are super quick to make, like the Advent calendar in a jar, while the toilet roll Advent calendars like the pretty snowflake are more time-consuming but really eye-catching.
Super Quick Ideas for DIY Riddle Advent Calendars
You can also put the puzzle cards in different coloured envelopes, number them 1-25 and pack them in a box. Or you can put each Advent calendar puzzle in a sandwich bag, which you can decorate according to your mood and number with 1-25. You can also roll the puzzle cards, close them with a bow, number them and hang them on a coat hanger with a ribbon.
If you’re short on time but still want to make a super pretty advent calendar that doesn’t look it, you can find inexpensive ready-made batsel sets on amazon*, for example.
25 Tricky and Funny Advent Calendar Riddles for Adults
The mixture makes the fun! My Advent calendar riddles consist of different types of puzzles with varying degrees of difficulty. To give you a better overview, I have divided them into fun Advent puzzles and tricky Advent puzzles. In the printable, however, I have already mixed them up, just as they ended up in my Advent calendar.
- Free download of the 25 Advent calendar riddles for adults printable
- Free download of the solutions printable
12 Fun Advent Calendar Puzzles for Adults

1. Joke Cryptogram to Puzzle Over
The task is to unravel a joke that is hidden behind the jumble of numbers. To make sure it’s not too easy, it’s not a well-known joke – but that doesn’t make it any less funny!
2. What Is It? Fun Advent Calendar Puzzle to Ponder
Most fun advent calendar puzzles for adults require a bit of thinking around the corner and it helps enormously if you know that no serious answer is being sought.
What does the miser celebrate when he stands in front of the mirror with 2 candles?
3. Curious Facts Crossword – Hard Advent Calendar Puzzle for Adults
In Italy, on the night of 5-6 January, a witch brings gifts in search of the baby Jesus. Do you know her name? Strange facts and curious knowledge about Christmas are bundled in this challenging crossword puzzle.
4. What Is It? Simple Advent Calendar Riddle for Adults With a True Core
Oh you merry, merry puzzle time. Which Christmas carols were there again? We are looking for a world-famous Christmas carol that not only parents sing with fervour.
Which is the parents’ favourite Christmas song?
5. Sing and Seek – The Carols Advent Calendar Puzzle for Adults
Wham!, Madonna, the Jackson 5, The Darkness – which famous Christmas songs did they write? Last Christmas, Santa Baby, I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus, I am Santa! Everyone knows these songs from listening to them, they play on the radio up and down. But this puzzle is more about looking closely than listening. There are 10 popular Christmas songs hidden in the letter grid that you have to find.
6. Simple Joke Question
Joke questions are a funny thing – one person finds this joke question hilarious, the other rolls his eyes. This simple Advent calendar puzzle for adults will definitely loosen up your laughing muscles.
What does Santa Claus have when he gets stuck in the chimney?
7. Word Puzzle With Christmas Films
The letter salad yields 10 titles of popular Christmas films. On top of that, there is a solution word hidden inside. What is it?
8. Joke Question From the Elf Room
Can elves read, write and do maths? What is on the curriculum at the elf school? A simple joke question to make you smile.
What do the elves learn from Father Christmas at the elf school?
9. Advent in the Jungle – Animal Puzzle
Joke question! By the way, at Christmas in the jungle, not only the monkeys roar this song, but also at the one or other Christmas party, when the pronunciation becomes a little more unclear, you can hear this song.
What do the monkeys roar at Christmas?
10. Funny Simple Riddle
With this simple puzzle, it helps if you think logically.
What’s a good name for an old snowman?
11. Cryptogram For Puzzling and Laughter
What joke is hidden behind the columns of numbers? First puzzle, then laugh.
12. Funny Advent Calendar Puzzle for Adults with Brains
You shouldn’t take this puzzle too seriously either. Thinking logically leads to the goal, because sometimes it is not easy to find the simple solution.
At Christmas, there are real candles on the tree, a fireplace and an arch of lights. Which do you light first?
13 Tricky Advent Calendar Puzzles

13. Christmas Crossword Puzzle
Why is the Advent wreath round? And what number does it stand for that symbolises Christmas? The first crossword puzzle has some tough questions about the Christmas season and is sure to get some heads spinning. By the way, the Advent wreath is round and thus stands for zero, a number without beginning and end that symbolises eternity.
14. Word Puzzle
In this puzzle, you are looking for a combination of 2 words that, when put together, give the solution to the puzzle. You can find the solution in the PDF.
A flowering plant whose rhizome, is widely used as a spice and a folk medicine. + Staple food prepared from a dough of flour and water, usually by baking.
15. Word Search
For a change, an easy puzzle where you don’t have to think much but find words.
16. What Is It? Riddle to Think About
A riddle in a sentence that denotes something that is not an object. What is the solution to this Advent calendar riddle for adults?
Chalk-white and light as fluff, as delicate as silk and moist as foam.
17. Word Puzzle for the Senses
Letter chaos! Which 12 words are in this letter salad? All the words have one theme in common: the scent of Advent.
18. Logic Riddle
Riddles with numbers can be quite a challenge. Especially when they come directly from the Grinch.
If Santa’s 7 elves take 7 minutes to make 7 dolls, then how long do you think 100 elves will need to make 100 dolls?
19. Word Puzzle
This word puzzle becomes one of the trickiest Advent calendar puzzles for adults with an additional question.
A part of the anatomy of humans, mammals, and other tetrapod animals located between the neck and the abdomen. + a fruit consisting of a hard shell protecting a kernel
20. Cryptogram for Clever Minds
Each number stands for a letter. Once the jumble of numbers has been untangled, the result is a beautiful Advent quote.
21. What Is It? Advent Calendar Puzzle for Adults
Which word – or better – which object (or is it a person? ;-)) is being searched for here? A riddle in one sentence to puzzle over.
In summer no one looks at me, in winter everyone loves me.
22. Logic Puzzle With Symbols
Calculating alone does not solve the puzzle, you have to look closely to crack the numerical code.
23. Word Puzzle
In this word puzzle, you have to form a combination of 2 words – that is the solution to the puzzle. The solution is in the solution PDF.
A festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples + the rise and fall of sea levels.
24. Puzzle to Look at Closely
A simple sentence, read several times and suddenly it clicks. With this Advent calendar puzzle for adults, you have to look very carefully, because everything you need to know is in this little sentence.
What is big on the 3rd of Advent and small on Christmas? (The A)
25. Logic Puzzle
Chaos in the Christmas bakery. The Elves are just full of nonsense! Logically combined, however, their chaos can be solved with just one move.
Elves are silly fellows. They’ve been playing a joke again! In the Christmas bakery, they giggle and swap the labels with the ingredients on the sacks so that none of them is attached to the right sack. Father Christmas now has to put things back in order. In the first sack are hazelnuts, in the second sack walnuts, in the third a mixture of walnuts and hazelnuts. Without looking into the sack, the wise Santa reaches into one in particular and pulls out a nut. Immediately he knows with certainty which tag to hang on which sack. Which wrong tag is hanging on the sack he has reached into?
Are you interested in puzzle games? An absolute highlight for me this year was the building puzzles GraviTrax The Game. But on Greatime you’ll find lots more brilliant board game tips with rewarding puzzle games. There are also lots of great ideas for Advent and Christmas on our blog and ideas for activities for two, family and friends all year round.
Stay up to date and follow Greatime on Facebook and Instagram!
*This article contains affiliate links. This means that if you order a product from amazon via one of these links, Greatime will receive a small commission. The product will not cost you a cent more.