This is a good puzzle - except I can't solve it!

[Richards]

Tiberius - the problem with that solution is that if you only get one question, and you waste it on determining which one always lies and which one always tells the truth, you still don't know which door is which (unless you had been told ahead of time that the one who tells the truth is guarding the door you want to go through or something).

Johnathan

 

[Tiberius]

Good point. I usually see the problem with a clause saying something to the effect of the truth-telling guardian guards the heaven door and the lying guardian the hell door. I guess I assumed it was there for this one. Yay me. Perhaps that's a local permutation.

 

[Wrathamon]

NM

 

[Hypersmurf]

I usually see the problem with a clause saying something to the effect of the truth-telling guardian guards the heaven door and the lying guardian the hell door.

That's... not much of a puzzle, is it?

-Hyp.

 

[Tiberius]

No. Which is why I always thought it to be a wee bit simplistic for inclusion in any puzzle-game.

 

[Asmor]

Yeah, that "Truth guardian/lying guardian" thing does show up a lot. I note that people tend to answer the question in a manner similar to the solution presented by Firelance. That always seemed a bit strange to me, as the question posed to the guardians/gods/what-have-you is not grounded in what the questioner knows to be factual. The problem never stipulates limitations to the guardians' knowledge. My question to the guardians would be more along the lines of "In a base 10 mathematical system, does 2+2 = 4?" You'd only need to ask once. If the guardian responded "yes", he's guarding the heaven door. If "no", he's guarding the hell door and should be avoided. For those of you who object to D&D characters prattling on about base 10 mathematics, substitute "Is the sky blue outside during the daytime" or some such.

There's no reason to assume, however, that the lying one is guarding the door to hell or that the truth telling one is guarding the door to heaven.

 

[Steel_Wind]

A brief personal anecdote on The Lady or the Tiger?

This classic short story was past of my class curriculum in grade 9.

It was, in fact, this short story which first lead me to suspect that there was something fundamentally wrong with women (in general) and that my adult life would probably end up a living hell as a result.

(As it turned out, I was partly right, but I digress).

During a class discussion of The Lady or the Tiger, my english teacher then decided to poll members of the class what we thought would be behind the door.

Ms. Sommers asked me first.

I was supremely confident in my answer. The princess loved him didn't she? He didn't >>really<< want to marry someone else - this wasn't choosing another woman over her. It was life or death. How could you want someone you loved to die horribly like that? It was inconceivable.

And so it was that I answered with about as much hesitation as the condemned man: "The Lady, of course."

The reaction from my female classmates, almost every one of them at once, was shocked horror and amazement and much shaking of heads and muttered laughter.

It was then that I understood that "The Lady or the Tiger" is a story not about life or death, but about a fundamental difference between men and women. We did not see the ending to that story in the same light at all.

It's 25 years later - and we still don't see life the same way.

[we now resume our regularly scheduled program, in progress]

 

[FireLance]

Interesting. After reading the story, I was convinced it would be the tiger, and I'm a guy. Perhaps I am just too cynical :\.

Edit: wrong smiley .

 

[Asmor]

I just read the story, and I'm leaning towards the lady. Hear's why.

It is stated that everyone knew that the man was indeed guilty of the crime he was accused of. There was no doubt about that. However, it is suggested that the King, in addition to simply wanting to exercise his favorite form of judgement and realizing he'd be satisfied by either conclusion, believed that the trial would also determine whether what the man had done, falling in love with his daughter, was fundamentally wrong or not.

Earlier in the story, they say that the man was the first man ever to dare fall in love with a princess, but that it had become quite commonplace since. This suggests that it became somewhat more accepted, possibly because the man opened the door to the lady and, so, was judged to be innocent.

Of course, just to play Devil's Advocate, love is hardly constrained by what is right and what is wrong, so the turnout of this trial could would matter little. Additionally, it seems that the author wrote it without wanting there to be a clear cut answer, and probably not even having developed one himself. From that view point, perhaps my reasoning above is flawed because it's based not on hints but rather just 'flavor text' that was written with no intention but to make the story more interesting and grand.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

It's the lady. We are told that the princess loves the man. If she sends him to the tiger, that shows us that she does not love him, but instead loves herself, mistaking her love for herself for love for the man. But the omnicient narrator has established that she loves him. Love is, if nothing else, putting someone else before yourself. So if she actually loved him (and her love was not simply vanity) then she would endure the pain of losing him to her most hated rival in order to save him from her mad father's stupid arena.

The girls who laughed at the answer, "the lady," are obviously people who have never loved anyone. They assume the princess only loves the way the man loves her, and not the man himself, because they can't understand any other way to be. This isn't a question of the difference between men and women. It's a question of the difference between people who love and people who don't love. The people who love will assume that the princess will behave the way they would, and save the man, because they are told straight up that she loves him. The people who don't love will assume that the princess will be self-serving even at the cost of the life of the one she loves. If we hadn't been told that the princess loved him, there may be doubt. But we know that she loves him, so she saves him, because that's what it means to love someone.

Of course you save the one you love even if it means losing them! If love doesn't mean just that, then it doesn't mean anything at all.

Edit:

Here's another way of looking at it. Let's say it's not a man and a princess. Let's say it's a mother and a child. The child has to choose between a tiger and a new mother. The new mother is the old mother's most hated enemy, and the old mother knows that if the child chooses the new mother, the child will forget the old mother and come to see the new mother as the child's real mother. If you were the mother, which door would you pick?

Love is love. If the mother loves her child, she will protect the child no matter what hardship it means for herself. If the princess loves the man, she will do the same thing.