Puzzles and Riddles

My penis.

I like the visual expression of it in the simplicity of a circle. (You'll have to forgive me on tau, I appreciate the elegance of math but in practical terms I know what I need to know, and let the rest be interesting anecdotes.)

What was the point of me being circumspect?

Congrats Dippy, so you are the next riddle master!

(also congrats to Jules for having an entertaining love life!)

This is a twist on a very traditional riddle so read carefully;

You are trapped in a labyrinth and come to stand before two doors, next to each door stands a stone guardian called LEFT and RIGHT, between the door there is a plaque that reads;

"one of these doors leads to the exit, the other to your certain doom. Ask the guardians for guidance but know this; one always tells the truth, the other always tells lies. They will only answer yes or no, know also that while they understand English perfectly, they will only answer with; 'da' and 'ja' which means which is for you to find out. You may only ask three questions, and each question must be put before a single guardian."

Off you go.

Okay, Dippy, I think this may be solvable in 2 questions even?

Fist step is to find out which word means which.
I ask the left guard (it does not matter): "Are you a liar?" no matter which one I ask, the liar will deny and say "no", the truthful one will also say "no". That way I know which word means which.

I then ask the left guard: "If I asked the other guard if the left door is the exit, would he agree?":
If left is exit and I meet the liar, reply is "no"
If left is exit and I meet the not liar: "no"
-> if answer is no, go left

If left is not exit and I meet liar: "yes"
If left is not exit and I meet not liar: "yes"
-> if answer is yes, go right

Congratulation, you are correct, you are up next.

What is the next number in the sequence?

1
11
21
1211
111221
312211

That took me freakin' ages to work out (another of the ones where I just go off on the wrong track, trying to manipulate the numbers into ascending like that) - but I get it now, each number is a plain-speech description of the previous one. So 312211 is "one 3, one 1, two 2s, two 1s" = 13112221.

Thank you, this is it, you are next, Daia:)

Okay - I spotted this one a couple of days ago, and thought it was rather cute:

A sundial is a traditional time-keeping device going back to ancient times that needs no moving parts. What is the ancient time-keeping device that needs the most moving parts?

(It's not some crazy obscure thing you've never heard of.)

If I'm right, it seems somewhat obscure to me...
An hourglass maybe? If all the sand counts.

The sand does indeed count, that's it. :) Your turn then.

(They're not that obscure, are they? Dad always used one (a three-minute one) in the kitchen, mum's still got it.)

Maybe it just seemed that way to me.
Well, all my others were figured out quickly, so I don't have a lot of high hopes for this one either...



I'm the beginning of the end
and I surround every place.
I'm essential to creation
and the end of time and space.
What am I?

Is it gravity? The 'beginning of the end' in that gravitational acceleration is what'll ultimately lead to the... whatever it is cosmologists think it going to end up happening to the universe these days. 'Surrounding every place' in the sense that any place (unless it's just coordinates in space, I suppose, but looking at it whimsically) is composed of matter, and matter is surrounded by its attendant gravity well. 'Essential to creation' because if nothing caused particles to clump together we'd never get stars and planets and so forth. 'End of time and space', see above re: ultimately ending the universe. Maybe? Am I even kind of on the right track?

No, it's not gravity.
I'm hesitant to answer the second question. Hmm...

E.

Bit unfair to people looking at autotranslated text, that.

That's it. Your turn.

Alrighty. This is shamelessly pilfered from some extrasite or other.

A turian soldier and an asari huntress, mortal enemies, are trapped on an island.
On this island there are seven wells, numbered 1 to 7.
The water in each well is poisoned - but if one is poisoned by one well, they will be restored to health by drinking from a higher-numbered well.
Well #7 is located on top of a mountain, which only the huntress can reach using her biotics.

After weeks of on-off fighting, they come to the conclusion that they're too evenly matched for anyone to win any time soon - so they decide to have a battle of wits.
Both agree to meet at midday, each with a glass of water. They swap glasses and drink, and are then free to leave each other's presence.

After a few hours, the turian soldier is perfectly healthy while the asari huntress lies dead.

What happened?

(and yes, I know there's the odd scientific inconsistency, just go with it)

I want to say that the Turian gave her a glass of ocean water, and she poisoned herself...

...but I can't wrap my mind around how he didn't die yet, either. Dug under the mountain for water, maybe? Hmm.

Oh sacred rings, I was reading it in SA English and everything...

If you're right about him bringing sea water, perhaps he'd guessed that the Huntress would bring poison from Well 7 - the only one that couldn't be neutralised, and that on the face of it she had the advantage of being the only one able to access - and he'd secretly drunk from one of the lesser wells before they met to exchange drinks? So the 'strongest' poison the Huntress brought actually saved him from what he'd already had, whereas the Huntress assumed his sea water was one of the lesser poisons, and afterwards went back to Well 7 and had a fatal drink in the belief that she was neutralising the poison she thought she'd been given.

Of course any Huntress would see the trap in taking Well 7's superiority for granted without thinking about how an opponent would perceive his chances, so she would've anticipated his move, and countered by bringing water herself, thus leaving him to be poisoned by his preparatory drink. But a turian capable of fighting a Huntress to a stalemate in the first place is no fool, so maybe he'd anticipate that, and bring a lesser poison after all, maybe with some sea water mixed in to make it taste salty, appearing to confirm the Huntress's suspicion of his counter to her initial superiority, thus setting her up to be poisoned when she doesn't drink from another well because she thinks he's counting on her doing that? Although since she would know he'd have to be very clever since he'd survived the direct fighting, she might anticipate just such a double-bluff. But he might use her assumption of superiority in a battle of wits to set her up to fail by intentionally using the 'obvious' subversion of providing sea water in the first place, hoping to trick her into thinking that his exhaustion from the fighting had dulled his wits as well...