you know what’s always bugged me? when a character is faced with some magical two headed being or some shit and one always lies while the other tells the truth and to figure out which is which the character’s like “which one of you is the liar” or something like bruh literally all you gotta do is be like “what’s two plus two” one of them’s gonna say four and the other one is gonna say 83 or some shit. there you go. answered. go on with your magical quest to defeat david bowie.
this has forty notes. that’s forty more notes than expected.
THIS IS A VERY GOOD POINT and deserves more notes
LISTEN i don’t normally engage in Discourse but this information is DANGEROUSLY MISLEADING!
the point of the riddle isn’t to figure out which one is lying, in fact, knowing which one lies and which one tells the truth is irrelevant. What you want is the correct answer from the magical beast/two guards/etc. Usually this means knowing which path to take. For that, you HAVE to ask it “if i ask the other head/guard/etc which is the safe way to go, what will they tell me?”
if you asked the truth-telling one, they’ll tell you the wrong way, because the liar will always mislead you. if you ask the liar, they’ll tell you the wrong way, because they’re misleading you, so
ALWAYS do the opposite of whatever answer you get.
“who cares this is a stupid tumblr post this doesn’t matter irl–”
WRONG AGAIN! story time:
A few years ago a friend threw a halloween party, and since he dressed as the Riddler, he decided to have a riddle contest.
now, i’ve been preparing for a riddle contest my entire life, since i first read the hobbit and it got bilbo out of trouble. for some reason, i assumed riddle contests were as inevitable as quicksand.
I answered the first riddle easily (it was one of the ones from the hobbit) and then i had to answer the next one to win a bottle of top-shelf rum. it was a variation on the two-guard riddle, only i had to choose one of two paper bags. one had crappy cheap vodka, the other the nice rum.
the host and his friend did the classic one lies one tells the truth thing, and of course before i asked everyone started shouting “ask him what color your hair is!” and stuff like that, but i already knew what to ask, so i shushed them and won the rum
remember, kids, it doesn’t matter which one is lying and which one is telling the truth. all that matters is you get the correct knowledge to move you forward, win your rum, and make you seem like a superhuman riddle-solver to a crowd of drunken party guests.
always be ready for a riddle contest
Here’s a thing that usually doesn’t come up when people try to criticise this riddle as well. One of the conditions of the riddle is typically that you only get to ask one question. You arrive at the liar and the truth teller and you need to find out which bridge is safe and which one will collapse when you’re halfway across.
They tell you that one of them always lies and that one of them always tells the truth. And they tell you you can ask them one question.
If you ask “What’s two plus two?” than great. You know which one lies but you also still don’t know which bridge you can cross and can’t find out.
You played yourself.
