970 – Evading Captcha
on June 10, 2024
Both of the guards have a handle. If the guard that always lies pulls his handle, then the minecart will divert to the second track. If both guards pull their handle, the prisoners will be released. One of the handles is covered by a wooden box, where half of the wooden planks of the original box have been replaced by new ones cut from a tree that fell when nobody was around. If guard A is taller than guard B, are we getting paid for this quest?
So guard on the left:
– Face concealing helmet which conceals motive.
– Uses a spear and a heater shield that is significantly taller than themselves. A combination that isn’t super common and may indicate somebody who likes having multiple options, especially as the shield isn’t equipped but the are otherwise battle ready.
– Wears green, a secondary colour usually the choice of colour of the deceptive in superhero media.
Guard on the right:
– Open face helmet, symbolic of somebody with nothing to hide.
– Practical multi-purpose weapon speaks to a straightforward approach.
– Wears blue, a primary colour more typical of heroic characters in pop culture.
Now this could simply be an attempt to subvert expectations or to bluff the person encountering them, but that would require an attempt at deception from both parties, but one of them never lies, so it seems unlikely they would coordinate towards deception.
So I am going with the guard in blue as the truthful one, fully aware that it is much more likely that whoever put them in this position has the authority to command people that are likely knights (or at least wealthy) to perform such a pointless guardian role, so has the authority and power to make them wear whatever they want. and that they are probably just members of the nobility, with no special loyalty to the truth or deception, intent on making people believe the underlying lie that only one of them tells the truth and the other lies, so that whatever answers are given an intruder will walk through the door feeling confident that they have overcome the core investigative challenge, only to discover both doors have terrible traps behind them.
Maybe the true liar is the guards we made along the way.
That ranks somewhere up there with:
Sometimes the real monsters are the friends we made along the way. Or
The real skeleton was inside you all along.