Even Bowie's Mullet Had More Structural Integrity Than This Riddle

On the Matter of Two Doors, One Truth, and One Absolute Nonsense

a treatise by Archibald Puddlefumble, Wizard Retired, Mostly

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Ah, hello. Yes, come in, mind the newt, he bites when startled and frankly he is always startled. I am Archibald Puddlefumble, Seventh-Degree Sorcerer, holder of an expired license to hex, and — more relevantly to today's business — a man who has personally walked into four wrong doors, one broom closet, and once, memorably, a portal that was labeled "DO NOT" in letters so large I assumed the rest of the sentence had simply fallen off.

Today we are discussing The Riddle. You know the one. Two doors. Two guards. One always lies, one always tells the truth, and somewhere behind one of them is a castle, and behind the other is a dungeon, or possibly a goblin king's tax audit, the movies are unclear.

Let us walk through it, because I have thought about this riddle more than is medically advisable.

The Setup, As Told To Small Children By People Who Have Clearly Never Been Lied To

You arrive. Two doors. Two guards, one blue, one red, both apparently unbothered by the life-or-death stakes of their employment, which tells you everything you need to know about the labyrinth's HR department.

One guard always lies. The other always tells the truth. You may ask exactly one question , to exactly one guard . No follow-ups. No "wait, what?" No calling your mother for advice. One shot.

This is, and I say this with the full authority of a man who once turned his own eyebrows invisible for a decade, an absolutely rotten deal.

The "Clever" Question

The move — and it is a genuinely lovely little piece of logic, I'll grant the labyrinth that much — is to ask one guard:

"What would the other guard say is the correct door?"

Here is why this works, explained the way I'd explain it to my apprentice, if I still had one, if he hadn't quit to become a florist, which, frankly, good for him:

- Ask the truthful guard, and he will honestly report the liar's lie. You get the wrong door, straight from an honest mouth. - Ask the lying guard, and he will lie about the truthful guard's honest answer. You get the wrong door, laundered through a dishonest mouth.

Either way — and this is the delightful part — you always get pointed at the wrong door. The lie and the truth cancel each other out like two arguing owls, and you're left holding one, single, reliably incorrect answer. You simply do the opposite. Walk through the other one. Collect your castle. Try not to gloat, it's unbecoming.

It's elegant. It's tidy. It is, in my professional wizarding opinion, better logic than most of the spells I learned in wizarding school, several of which involved a rhyme scheme and a great deal of hoping.

Now Here Is Where I, Archibald Puddlefumble, Put On My Skeptical Hat

I own several hats. This one has a small bell on it. It jingles when I am Onto Something.

The entire riddle rests its whole rickety weight on one assumption, delivered to you by the very people you are trying to out-think:

"One of us always lies, one of us always tells the truth."

Who told you that? They did. The guards. The two individuals whose entire professional purpose, as far as we can tell, is to make sure you die in a dungeon instead of getting cake at the castle.

Consider, if you will, the horrifying possibility that both guards are liars.

If both guards lie, then the statement "one of us tells the truth and one of us lies" is false — which is, conveniently, exactly the sort of thing a liar is delighted to say. Both guards could recite that line in perfect unison, smiling, utterly unbothered, because it costs a liar nothing to lie about the rules of the game you think you're playing.

And once that foundation cracks, so does everything built on top of it. "There is no other way to the castle"? Could be a lie. Could be six other doors. Could be a perfectly serviceable window around the side that nobody mentions because nobody asked. The whole riddle feels like ironclad logic, but really it's exquisite reasoning applied to a premise you accepted on faith, from strangers, at a fork in a maze, under time pressure, with a goblin king somewhere humming ominously in the middle distance.

I have flown on the backs of dragons who lied to me less than that premise does.

The Moral, Such As It Is

I am not saying don't ask the clever question. Ask it! It is a good question! It is, in fact, close to the best question available to you, given the terrible hand you've been dealt.

I am saying: notice what you had to assume before the clever question could work at all. Notice that the hardest part of the trick isn't the logic — the logic is lovely, symmetrical, practically musical. The hard part is that you're trusting the rules of a game explained to you by a party with an obvious incentive to see you lose.

Which, now that I say it aloud, sounds exactly like every negotiation I've ever had with a goblin king, a landlord, or my newt, who to this day insists he "definitely didn't" eat my second-best wand.

He definitely did. There's no truthful version of that newt.

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Archibald Puddlefumble is the author of "Doors I Have Regretted, Volumes I–XI" and "Why Is The Newt Like That: A Memoir." He is available for consultations, weddings, and the occasional exorcism, weather permitting.