Violence is always the answer
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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.
But you asked your one question to the one remaining guard. You gained no intel.
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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.
I believe that’s the joke. The barbarians intelligence isn’t usually very high.
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But the other party members haven’t
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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?
“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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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
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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But the other party members haven’t
The riddle only makes sense as such with one question in total.
The trick is to ask one guard what the other guard would say is behind a particular door.
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The riddle only makes sense as such with one question in total.
The trick is to ask one guard what the other guard would say is behind a particular door.
The riddle is worded vaguely and we just murdered one of the guys. I think we can lawyer another question out of them.
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The riddle is worded vaguely and we just murdered one of the guys. I think we can lawyer another question out of them.
Start b-ballin’ with that head and see how long it takes that guard to change his tune
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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.
Pyramids of Mars
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Do you think it would suck to be one of the bottom heads?
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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
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The third guard stabs people who ask tricky questions.
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My favorite take on this:
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One question per group. Also now you die because murder.
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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Just shoot em in the foot
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I believe that’s the joke. The barbarians intelligence isn’t usually very high.
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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“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
That’s wild that this works. What.
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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.
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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
I did not think this was going to work. Som bitch it does. Crazy
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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.
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.
