> ok, here's yet another riddle-related thing i forgot to ask: you know in
> "labyrinth" when sarah comes to the two doorkeepers who say "one of us always
> tells the truth and one of us always lies," and she has to figure out which
> door is the right one to take? well, what question was she supposed to ask -
> how was she supposed to figure out which was which?!?
Raymond Smullyan's books (_What is the Name of this Book?_, _To Mock a
Mockingbird_, _The Lady or the Tiger_) are full of this sort of puzzle. What
is the situation? Two doors, one safe; two guards, one honest/one liar; how
many questions can she ask? Of one guard only, or the same question of each,
or one different question to each?
> oh, yeah, and here's some more completely unrelated stuff i forgot to ask
> last time: does anyone know of any novel or cartoon versions of "the snow
> queen" or "east of the sun, west of the moon"? (the reason i ask isn't just
Joan D. Vinge wrote an SF novel _The Snow Queen_, which may or may not be
inspired by the fairy tale, which I don't think I know. Brust's book was _The
Sun, the Moon, and the Stars_, and made a better novel than fairy tale.
-xx- Damien X-)
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Received on Mon Jul 19 11:19:05 1999
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