Foo - Lier Lier pants on fire!

You are traveling down a road that comes to a T intersection. One road goes left, one right. You know that one road goes to town and the other further out into the country. You want to go to town put you don't know to turn left or to turn right.


There is a house on the corner. You know that in this house, there lives two identical twins. You know one always tells the truth and that the other always lies. The twins are very shy and don't talk much. You see one playing in the yard. You can only risk one question for fear you will scare them away. What is the one question you ask that will get you to town?


If you have heard this or similar before riddle no fair answering. And no searching.

Spell much?

I would ask the child what direction Raymond Smullyan would say town is. And then go the other way.

j

Ask either one which direction their twin would say to go, and go the other direction.

I'd check the GPS.

It seems to me that if you already knew all this stuff, you should also know where town is.

If I was MV I'd do both twins and forget about town.

Ask either one which direction their twin would say to go, and go the other direction.


You are smarter than the rest of the people that answered the question! :)

Unless you cheated. :)

This exact riddle is in Ultima 6 ("west is best", "to the east lie beasts"), and Dr. Who had to answer this when running to head off some powerful villain in an Egyption-like temple.

It's always a fun one to answer, and invariably the question to ask is asking one of the people what the other one would say... then taking the opposite choice than the one they think is right.

Yeah it has been going around for a while in a number of different forms. There is one story regrading native tribes and a fork in the river, But that one might be Un PC today. :)

Spell much?

Sieg heil, Rechtschreibungspolizist!

Yeah it has been going around for a while in a number of different forms. There is one story regrading native tribes and a fork in the river, But that one might be Un PC today. :)

This paradox has a much longer pedigree than that, too. Philosophers have been bouncing it around for thousands of years in one form or another. It was first known as the paradox of the Cretins. Supposedly, people from Crete were real cretins (yeah, that's where we get that word from) who lied all the time. Plato and Aristotle both tackle it. In a simpler form, it is really problematic:

Is this sentence true or false: This sentence is false.

Much ink has been spilled by mathematicians and philosophers about it. And it really does seem to resist a neat and satisfying solution.

j

You are smarter than the rest of the people that answered the question! :)

Unless you cheated. :)

I think most everybody has heard this and chose comedy instead. Some were pretty good, I like Velo Vol's