During the spring festival I tend to have far too much time on my hands. I decided to refresh on using JavaScript and XML. So an afternoon of playing around yielded this website.

http://miyu.joshmcfarland.net/

Your objective is to guess what word the riddle谜语 is referring to. The answers aren't complex words and usually fall into the categories of food, animals, professions and so on.

It only accepts simplified character input (not pinyin). You can use the hint button to reveal the category or the "I don't know!" button to get the answer.

Good luck!

interesting site... I'm looking forward to playing around with it. Anyway to keep the riddle up after you ask to reveal the answer? That way I can re-check the riddle after I have the answer.

Anyway, nice stuff.

I just made a quick change. Now it just puts the answer in the textbox for you if you select "I don't know!", instead of moving on so quickly.

I manually entered all 99 riddles/answers into the XML so I forgot people might actually want to study them a bit more haha.

I just tried this one:
一对兄弟，
住在一起，
雨天出门走路，
晴天待在家里。
The hint is 衣服, so I entered 雨鞋 as the answer.
No. It only accepts 雨靴 as correct!

@pts Yes, you're right. There are probably several answers for many of them. At the moment, it only accept a single answer. You got the point well enough, that although it says you're wrong you can still feel good about your answer haha. Though I've never heard of rain shoes. Then again when I was younger I had a pair of "creek shoes".

If I find the motivation I'd have it store multiple answers, allow traditional and pinyin input and remember previously answered riddles. Right now it's just riddles and answers selected randomly from a paperback book I bought here.

Suggestions/bugs are certainly welcome though!

It looks good - my suggestion would be, if you have access to enough riddles of various reading levels, to have a choice of difficulty.

@Catherine I agree. Several of the riddles I've added are a bit confusing. I don't think finding more riddles on the web would be too difficult, my ability to appropriately rate them might come into question though. Certainly sounds like a task for a rainy day!