Violence is always the answer
Violence is always the answer
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My favorite take on this:
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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.
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The guard replies "I don't know for sure".
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Alternate solution:
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Is there an actual plot to Mimi, or is she just a complete chaos goblin?
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Simply goblin
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Is there more of this?
What's this from?
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Nhim is the artist. The character is Mimi. They’re all standalone comics, but there’s a bunch with Mimi. All have the same crazy goblin energy to them.
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But they gained no information on which door to choose ='(
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The Barbarian got what they wanted, which is to have an excuse to rip another head off.
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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.
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Go do something productive.
No.
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This still doesn't accomplish the goal of knowing which door will kill you. All you've done is determine which guard is the liar.
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I believe that's the joke. The barbarians intelligence isn't usually very high.
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I love playing low Intelligence high Wisdom characters. Because Wisdom governs stats like Perception, Insight, and Animal Handling. So your character will notice things that the rest of the party misses, but often doesn’t have the intelligence to put the individual pieces together.
Once played a high wisdom barbarian. He would notice things like traps or clues, but I would RP it with things like “Hey, why’s that wire stretched across the path? Someone is going to trip over that…” The other players very quickly learned to pay attention whenever I asked stupid questions, because it was usually my way of announcing “I noticed something that the rest of you missed.”
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So you ask them which way leads to the castle and you don't pick the way they say.
If we're assuming that these things are actually bound by some kind of rule stating they literally cannot lie or literally cannot tell the truth.
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That is why it is better for the barbarian to snap the wrist of the one guard, so that you can ask them a question still or you ask the first guard which way to the castle then rip his head off followed by asking the second guard if the first guard is dead. You will get the question from each guard and know which one tells the truth.
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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 correct 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).
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The liar responds "I don't know"
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Truth teller: "He'll point you towards the door that leads to certain death"
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"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"
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Just shoot em in the foot
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And the surviving guard will most definitely answer a 2nd question despite the rules.
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This doesn't help the party decide which door to go through at all
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So the traditional answer here is to ask them to point at the door the other guard will say is safe.
However, I'm curious, does anyone know of any other valid solutions?
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"Is the guard that tells the truth standing in front of the safe door?" If they say yes, you go through their door, if they say no then you go to the other one
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Could probably do something clever with XOR.
Is exactly one of the following statements true? You are the liar. Your door is the safe door.
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How is that a valid answer, they would both point at a different door
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They will both point to the bad door.
If asking the thruthful guard, he will point to the door the liar says is safe, which would be the bad door. If asking the liar, he would consider what the thruthful guard says is safe, then reverse that answer, still ending up on the bad door.
They cancel out, so whichever guard you ask doesn't matter.
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The liar, knowing the truth-teller will point to the good door, points to the bad door.
The truth-teller, knowing the liar would point to the bad door, points to the bad door.
Either way, you take the one your guard doesn't point to.
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This puzzle is always presented as difficult, but why not just ask a known? If your eyes are brown just ask “Are my eyes brown?” You’d immediately know which one lies or tells the truth.
E: I missed the limit of one question.
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Then you still don't know which door is the correct one, you've just learned which guard tells the truth and you've used up your one question. The trick is to ask which door the other guard would tell you is the correct one and then go through the other door. If you've asked the lying guard, they'll lie about what the honest one would say and point you towards the wrong door. If you asked the honest one, they'll truthfully tell you what the lying guard would say and also point you towards the wrong door
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Because there are two doors and only one question. If you ask a known question unrelated to the door you find out who the liar is but lose your opportunity to ask them which is the correct door.
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Knowing who lies and who tells the truth doesn't tell you which door leads to the prize and which to death.
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The difficulty comes from only being able to ask one question. It's very easy to figure out the liar, but it's much more difficult to figure out the liar and the correct door in the same question
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In fact, the lying guard is a red herring. You get one question, and need one piece of info: the door. The canonical question doesn't tell you which guard lies, nor do you care to find out.
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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.
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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.
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It's still trivial, assuming the three guards guard three doors: just ask each guard: "Would the guard that always lies say this door is safe?" The random guard will give a random answer while the other two give the inverted answer. Even better if don't ask the random guard first, then you can repeat the question about the other doors to the same guard and only need two questions
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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.
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Pyramids of Mars
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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.
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Do you think it would suck to be one of the bottom heads? 🤔
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One question per group. Also now you die because murder.
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Barbarian just ripped the head off of one of the guards, you think the other guard is going to be able to arrest them?
"Answer our questions or you're next."
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Jajaja no creo
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JAJAJAJAJAJJAJAJAJAJJAJAJAJAJAJAJJAJAJAJJAJAJJAJAJJAJAJAJAJJ almighty
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Jajaja
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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).
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.
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.
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.
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.