Once upon a time, in a temple, there were three deities: Truth, Lie and Wisdom. The Truth Deity always told the truth. The Lie Deity always told the lie. The Wisdom Deity sometimes told the truth, sometimes told the lie. Unfortunately, those three deities looked exactly the same, so that no one could distinguish them. One day, a sage came by and he differentiated them by the following trick: He asked the deity sitting on the left: “Who is the middle deity?”- “Truth”, said the deity. He asked the deity sitting in the middle: “Who are you?”- “Wisdom”, replied the deity. He asked the deity sitting on the right: “Who is the middle deitie?”- “Lie”, the deity answered. How could the sage distinguish the three deities?
Answer
The left deity is Wisdom; the middle one is Lie, and the right one is Truth. Explain: The left deity (L) said that the middle one (M) is Truth; therefore, L cannot be Truth (because there cannot be two Truth Deities!). M said he was Wisdom; therefore, he cannot be Truth. Thus, R is Truth. According to him, M is Lie and as a result, L is Wisdom.
I don’t think this would work if the middle diety says ‘truth’.
If the other two answer ‘wisdom’, you would know that the middle is Truth but you wouldn’t know the other two.
If you add the rule that the deities are guaranteed to give different answers.
Then if the other two answer ‘lie’ and ‘wisdom’, then the middle one could either be Lie or Truth.
I would like someone to prove me wrong, I’m not great at these types of riddles.
