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.
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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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.
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That's why it's funny.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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The guard replies "I don't know for sure".
Alternate solution:
Is there an actual plot to Mimi, or is she just a complete chaos goblin?
Simply goblin
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But they gained no information on which door to choose ='(
The Barbarian got what they wanted, which is to have an excuse to rip another head off.
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?"
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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.
Go do something productive.
No.
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.
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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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).
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.
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And the surviving guard will most definitely answer a 2nd question despite the rules.
This doesn't help the party decide which door to go through at all
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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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.
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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.
Knowing who lies and who tells the truth doesn't tell you which door leads to the prize and which to death.
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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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.
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