The Labyrinth Guardians

Logic Level 2

You are walking in a labyrinth and all of a sudden you find yourself in front of three possible roads: the road on your left is paved with gold, the one in front of you is paved with marble, while the one on your right is made of small stones. Each street is protected by a guardian. You talk to the guardians and this is what they tell you:

The guardian of the gold street: “This road will bring you straight to the center. Moreover, if the stones take you to the center, then also the marble takes you to the center.”

The guardian of the marble street: “Neither the gold nor the stones will take you to the center.”

The guardian of the stone street: “Follow the gold and you’ll reach the center, follow the marble and you will be lost.”

Given that you know that all the guardians are liars, can you choose a road being sure that it will lead you to the center of the labyrinth? If this is the case, which road you choose?

None of the above ( I don't trust these guardians ) gold street marble street stone street

3 solutions

Vaibhav Borale
Jul 21, 2014

As the guardian of the gold street said “This road will bring you straight to the center. Moreover, if the stones take you to the center, then also the marble takes you to the center." means golden way can't be right as given that each guardian is liar.

We can conclude now either of the remaining 2 is right answer and even 2nd statement also proved that!! (Marble way guardian also lied that neither of gold and stone way is correct.)

I think there is no need to read 3rd statement and we can directly conclude following results step by step now. i) Gold way won't lead to center of the labyrinth. (By Statement 1&3) ii) Either stone way or Marble way is correct. iii) Stone way will lead to center. (By statement 2)

The guardian of the gold street eliminates the possibility of the gold street.which makes it 50/50.The guardian of the marble street makes us sure either the gold or the stone street will take us to the center.Gold is already eliminated.......So, the answer will obviously be the stone street........

Seemanta Bhattacharjee - 6 years, 10 months ago

Exactly right!!

VAIBHAV borale - 6 years, 10 months ago

what happens to what the stone guardian said: follow the marble and you will be lost? it only means that the guardian of the stone street is saying that marble is the way.

John Wong - 6 years, 5 months ago

John, you can check the solution as I have posted here below.

Abhay Tiwari - 5 years, 11 months ago

i checked the statements.. i still find it odd that the stone guardian should be the way to the center. Again, the marble guardian says: 1) not the gold 2) not the stone will both take you to the center. If these are false, then, the gold or the stone must be true... but we know that gold is not true because gold guardian is saying that all guardians lead to the center. and stone is saying that Follow the gold and you reach the center and follow the \marble and you will be lost. \meaning, Gold is not and \marble is the way.

John Wong - 5 years, 8 months ago

Why can't we use the negation of 'follow the marble and you will be lost' to jump to the answer? Presumably the option isn't just either lost or right path? So the marble path wont get you lost but will take you somewhere else.

Tom Dufall - 6 years, 10 months ago

Because his destination is center and not NOT lost.

Saya Suka - 3 months, 3 weeks ago

Annie W.
Feb 22, 2015

Statement A: "This road will bring you straight to the center. Moreover, if the stones take you to the center, then also the marble takes you to the center," from the gold guardian.

We can draw these conclusions from this statement: since all the guardians are liars, the gold street will not bring you STRAIGHT to the center (it may still bring you to the center, however), and if the stones take you to the center, the marble will not take you to the center.

Statement B: "Neither the gold nor the stones will take you to the center," from the marble guardian.

We can draw this conclusion from this statement: either the gold or the stones will take you to the center, and possibly both.

Statement C: "Follow the gold and you'll reach the center, follow the marble and you will be lost," from the stone guardian.

We can draw these conclusions from this statement: the gold will not lead to the center, and the marble MIGHT bring you to the center but might not (you won't get lost on it).

Therefore, the stone will bring you to the center as we have already determined that either the gold or the stones will take you to the center and that the gold will not take you to the center.

Abhay Tiwari
Jul 14, 2015

This question is deeper than we thought, the first guardian said, "This road will bring you straight to the centre.Moreover if the stones take you to the centre, then also the marble takes you to the centre".... In his first sentence we can make out that gold road is definitely not the right way....His second sentence is a little tricky here. If the stone takes you to the centre then definitely marble will not...this is what he meant. The whole second sentence is a lie but its first part can be considered as a probability given by him for the stone road to be right one....second guardian said, " neither the gold nor the stone way is correct" the second part of the statement clashes with the gold road guardian's tricky statement made at the last....and third guardian said, "follow gold for centre, follow marble you will be lost" now the gold thing here clashes with the point of first guardian and gold is now definitely not the way here...the first one made it confirm about the marble in his second statement that if stone is the right road then marble is definitely not the way. And second also lied for the stone road. Since majority of truths are there for the stone road...so I will go with the stone. Moreover third guardian did not say anything about the stone road. So, its like checking for the majority here...

The Labyrinth Guardians

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