Are they Great Balls?
07.03.2026 21:55
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Are they Great Balls?
But your question wasn't 'is your door safe?' It was 'would the other guy say their door is safe?'
Regardless of who you speak to, if the answer is 'yes', the door is dangerous.
If the right guard is honest, and answers 'no', then that means that the left guard would not have sent you to the left door. In this case, the left guard is dishonest, and would have sent you to the wrong door, meaning the left door is safe.
That's my point, though. So many people *think* they know it, but act as if 'I'll just ask the guards what hair colour they have' is an entire solution.
Exactly that, yeah. When you make a human character, all of the characterisation has to come from you. When you make an elf or an orc, that already says something about them.
Also, bsky insists your comment was written in French for some reason?
Here's a take that will get me in hot water with certain corners of the internet:
Humans aren't a boring fantasy/RPG race. They're a blank canvas. You just gotta put in more effort into making them interesting.
You don't need to 'outsmart' the puzzle. A good puzzle wants to be solved. And if you engage with it honestly and in good faith, reaching the solution is so much more rewarding than twisting the premise to be worse than it is.
And... I like it! I like it a lot. The puzzle is elegant, clean, and simple to comprehend. It's a classic for a reason.
There's other questions you can ask that also work ('If I asked you if that door leads to freedom, would your answer be yes?'), but those don't undermine the basic premise.
At no point here do you figure out which of the guards is the liar and which the truth-sayer. You ask the question to one of them, get pointed to a door, and then pick the other door. The truth/lies question doesn't factor into it at all. It's a mechanic for the puzzle, not the puzzle itself.
If you ask it of the liar, they would falsely surmise their colleague would lie, and point to the wrong door.
No matter who you ask it of, you will be pointed to the door behind which lays death. All you have to do is thank them politely, walk up to the other door, and leave.
The question to ask is: "If I asked your colleague which door leads to freedom, which door would they point to?"
If you ask this to the truth-telling guard, they will correctly surmise that their colleague would lie and point to the wrong door.
The key to the solution is in keeping your eyes on the prize: the door to freedom. That's where you wanna end up, and everything else has to serve that goal. The riddle asks: Which question?
The solution rests in figuring out a question that yields the same answer no matter which guard you ask it.
The following comments will discuss the solution. If you don't know it yet, and want to try and figure it out for yourself, stop reading here and go do that.
That's it. That's all you need. Two doors, two guards, one question. Now, a lot of people are tempted to try and figure out which of the two guards is the liar. But that's a bit of a trap. With only one question, you'd have to get that information, but also the solution to the doors question.
Truth one: You are in a room with two doors. One will lead to freedom, the other to your death.
Truth two: In the room with you are two guards. One always lies, the other always speaks the truth.
Truth three: You may ask only one question, and only to one of them.
Which question do you ask?
Right, enough complaining about people's reaction to the Two Guards riddle and its unfortunate place in the Zeitgeist. I wanna talk a bit about the riddle itself and why I like it so much.
The riddle presents a simple premise with three truths, and those are all that you need to solve it elegantly
I couldn't even be fucked to see if Joss Whedon is attached to this at all. There's a hypothetical universe where if he wasn't, I'd be interested. But no. No emotion, no curiosity. Nothing.
Yeah I saw the announcement and was struck by how it didn't make me feel anything at all -not joy, not apprehension, not concerns, nothing- and this might be a big reason why.
"Who is this even for?" I might ask. "Probably not me," I would conclude.
It is! I really like the riddle and I really like the logic behind the solution!
And it adds to my frustration that people would rather act smugly superior than engage with the premise in good faith and have it lead to a cool solution.
Neither of them speak until you ask your question.
It's a logic puzzle where you know the information you need to solve it from the outset, not a roleplay scenario that has to make sense within the context of the premise.
Imagine there's a sign that explains it if that works for you.
In the correct answer, you don't even find out which of the guards lies and which one tells the truth. It's not only not the answer, it's entirely irrelevant.
One of my most persistent pet peeves is people confidently claiming the 'two guards' riddle is easy, showing they don't even grasp the premise.
You have one question, not unlimited; and the goal isn't to find the liar, it's to find which of two doors won't kill you if you step through it.
hey look a fun history lesson!
gavin newsom is a very useful weathervane because he believes in nothing save the fact that he should be president
that he's making these noises about israel support should tell you how incredibly over it is for israel within the democratic party going forward
The cruelty is the point. The cruelty has always been the point. They're doing exactly what they've wanted to do all along.
Microsoft is managing in a few months what Linux users haven't been able to pull off in three decades.
Made me interested in trying Linux
Either that or they're preparing for good old anexation.
"Actions speak louder than words, and the silence of inaction is deafening."
