I mean, the Barbarian asked the one question and didn’t gain anything from it. Knowing which one is the liar doesn’t… help anymore.
That’s why this is a brilliantly played barbarian. They think they are clever but will still have to do things the hard way.
Ah. Normally I see this with no limit on questions. You’re right. It’d only work with at least two questions.
You can ask both guards if an item is an item. “Does this cup contain fluid” would work, it doesn’t have to be a dead guy.
Well, obviously. But a barbarian might have a preference.
I’ve only heard it with one question, that’s the whole point. Otherwise you just ask a guard some trivial question (e.g. What color is the sky?) to determine which is the liar, then just ask which is the safe door.
The whole point is to get the information you need from a single question.
Maybe I’ve only seen a fucked up version.
“What would the result be of combining the following terms with “and”: the direction of the correct door, and the color of the sky?”
Careful with that because “the wrong direction and blue” would still be a lie. So would “the correct direction and fluorescent yellow”.
And it has a bunch of assumptions about the sky and their perception and knowledge of it built in.
The scenario usually says that “one only tells the truth” and “one only tells lies”. at this point it becomes a question of whether a truth and lie in one sentence is considered impossible
Yeah, it’s impossible to say one way or the other because the setup is underdefined and leaves a lot of room for ambiguity or loopholes.
On that note, don’t beat yourself up or consider yourself stupid because of that. Even though it’s questionable whether it would work or give them room to screw you, I think it was a good creative solution to the riddle that I’ve never seen before. If you came up with that on your own, I’d consider that a sign of good potential. Nurture and refine that, don’t try to beat it down to avoid being wrong ever. (Haha I really hope you’re not like 50 or that might come off as really condescending rather than encouraging).
Like, thinking about it more, I think it can be resolved by changing the “and” to an “or”, at least on the lying side. Though that would open up the truth side to be able to sneak in a lie while technically telling the truth. But there might be another adjustment that would close the loophole entirely and give a solution that doesn’t require a reference to the other guard’s answer.
That’s why it’s funny.
That assumes the other guy holds to his principles in the face of death. If I were the dm, the act of tearing the other guy’s head off and then threatening to do the same to the other one unless granted another question would at least grant advantage on an intimidation check
I’ve always seen it as outside of their control. It’s not that the lying guard chooses to lie, it’s that they’re incapable of not lying.
I mean, he could still lie. He’d just have to afford one more question
Alternate solution:
Is there an actual plot to Mimi, or is she just a complete chaos goblin?
Simply goblin
How can they both explain it when one only tells lies?
I’m not going to trust the rules given to me by a guard who might be the one who lies
Is there more of this?
What’s this from?
My favorite take on this:
That last question is ambiguous enough (in this specific scenario) that either answer would work. It’s both true that the other guard can’t tell her something happened (due to being dead), while the other guard would have said that something did happen if he had been able to. So it’s a meaningless question but the wife doesn’t know that since she doesn’t know the guard is dead.
Which just adds another layer to the joke lol.
And the surviving guard will most definitely answer a 2nd question despite the rules.
Jajaja no creo
JAJAJAJAJAJJAJAJAJAJJAJAJAJAJAJAJJAJAJAJJAJAJJAJAJJAJAJAJAJJ almighty
But they gained no information on which door to choose ='(
Barb could simply kill Death-itself if choice was certain death room.
Opening the certain death door reveals a guy in a dark robe with a scythe: “Hey, what’s up?”
I think you mean
HEY, WHAT'S UP?PLEASE BE QUICK ABOUT IT, I HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO GET TO.
“Uhh… Wrong door, sorry.”
The Barbarian got what they wanted, which is to have an excuse to rip another head off.
The first time I encountered a version of this riddle it actually wasn’t Labyrinth. It was an old black and white episode of Dr Who aired on PBS when I was a little kid. Same scenario but if I recall, robots instead of guardsmen. I think the good doctor solved the riddle in the typical way of asking one robot what the other would say. I’m looking for it now but I can’t find the scene.
Pyramids of Mars
Yes, thank you!! Found the scene itself since the whole serial is apparently on youtube: https://youtu.be/lLBHbt9QYFU?t=5458
Funny how my memory had it in black and white. And I remember the scene being much longer. I watched it when I was like, 9.
Maybe your childhood TV was black and white.
Length, brains just love to add details that dont exist
This doesn’t work. Knowing which guard is a liar doesn’t tell you which door is the correct one (the actual answer has been given in this thread).
Now let’s make it a little harder. You have three guards: one tells the truth, one lies, one answers randomly. The guards understand you, but only answer either “da” or “ja”. One means yes, one means no, but you don’t know which is which. You get to ask each guard one question.
Give them a paradox by encoding the other two’s potential responses into the question (similarly to the two guard solution, but this time the random response is included). If they are able to answer, then you asked the random one, because the liar and truth teller have no idea what the random one would answer so can’t answer only yes or no without potentially violating their truthiness rule.
This isn’t to solve the puzzle but to see what the other two would do in that situation. If I figured out the random one with the first question, I’d use the 2nd to ask the same thing of one of the others. Then, if it’s still 2 doors, the two guard solution will work on the last one to figure it out.
But if the first guard asked explodes or something when asked, I think that there wouldn’t be enough questions left to find both the random guard (which I believe you have to do first) and the door. Though if you change the question to only ask about one other’s answer instead of both, you’ll be able to find both the random guard and the safe door.
Though hopefully the whole setup isn’t a lie and everyone present is a strategic liar that wants you dead. Imagine doing one of those riddles and when you step through the door you notice both doors lead into the same room whose walls now seem to be closing in and the last thing you hear is one of the guards asking another why riddles seem to get people to let their guard down anyways.
When I was a substitute teacher I would give the kids logic puzzles of varying difficulty. I would offer $100 if anyone could provide me with the answer to this one. If they looked it up on Wikipedia and could then explain it to me, I’d give them a king size candy bar.
I never had to pay out.
Ask either guard: “If I asked the other guard which door led to the castle, what would they say?” The answer is always the door that leads to instant death; enter the other door.
The guard replies “I don’t know for sure”.
Then, rip both of them in half and knock down the safe door so that everyone after you immediately knows the safe route
If you rip them both in half, then two of your party are cursed to be the next two truth/lie guards. Roll for unintended consequences.
“So, you’re telling me I could have just greater restoration’d the guards rather than killing them? My god isn’t going to like this.”
Time to rip the table, the DM, and everyone’s minifigs in half. It’s rippening time.
[sings]: I’d like to rip the world in half / for perfect disharmonyyyy!
I’m a fan of the revised Little Mermaid song: https://youtube.com/watch?v=fcbazH6aE2g
The third guard stabs people who ask tricky questions.
I feel like this is an XKCD…
This doesn’t help the party decide which door to go through at all
For years, I had my own headcanon for the Labyrinth movie. In the scene, the young Sarah correctly solves the riddle, passes through the correct door, says “This is a piece of cake!” and then she immediately falls down a pit of doom. This confused me, because she got the answer right. So I reasoned that the guards were both liars, and because they both participated in explaining the rules, they were lying about the rules.
It was only a few years ago that I read in an interview that the Labyrinth (or Jareth) dropped her down the hole because she said it was a piece of cake. It was her arrogance that set her back, not that she got the riddle wrong.
But now it still bothers me that the liar, whichever one he is, helps explain the rules of the scenario. If he always lies, then she can’t trust that either of them ever tells the truth. The rules have to be described separately, like on a sign or by a disinterested third party. Or you could phrase it differently, like “One of us will answer your question truthfully, and one of us will answer your question dishonestly.” That way you avoid saying that they always lie, and specify that the lie will only be in response to the one question.
Fuck, I’ve had too much coffee. How the fuck did I get up on this soapbox? Why are you still reading? Go do something productive.
Go do something productive.
No.
That’s funny! but if you want to know how to solve this problem every time, even when asking one single question, just ask this question:
“If I ask the other guy which is the correct path, which path will he tell me?”
No matter who you ask, both of them will point to the WRONG path, meaning the correct one is the one they DIDN’T point to. Here is the logic.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume the correct path is the right path. When you ask that question, if the person is the truthful one, he will be honest and say the left path. Because if you ask the liar what the right path is, he will say it is the left path (which is false). Now if you ask the liar what the other guy will say the correct path is, he will lie to you and say it is the left path (which is also false, the truthful one will tell you it is the right path and not the left).
The liar responds “I don’t know”
Truth teller: “He’ll point you towards the door that leads to certain death”
“I have no idea what the other guy would say, we’re honest-lier pair of guards, not reading each other fucking thoughts pair of guards”
and also, using “correct path” instead of “right path” will be less confuzzling because english words can have multiple meanings and are the dumb.
You should even specify “path to the castle”, because there isn’t technically a “correct” path.
yeah, it could be the liar guard’s desire or prime directive to send you down the deadly path. to him that could be interpretated as the correct path. especially if these are automatons working off of some machine logic. like, they don’t even need to be out to get you, that’s totally something that bad code could do on accident.
This puzzle was used in more than one place than in Labyrinth. I played video games where they had that puzzle (Ultima 6 had that).
Do you think it would suck to be one of the bottom heads? 🤔
