How Sarah worked out the puzzle in the 1986 movie Labyrinth

Question

Link to the scene: https://youtu.be/grOpvXBmTx8?si=7dT8NONFH8myDLdf

This puzzle has confused my dad when it first came out and me since he first showed it to me.

In: Other

Answer 1

Its a classic riddle, so their’s every chance she already knew the solution.

But it goes like this:

You *know * one guard will lie, one tells the truth. The trick is to phrase the question such that you can get the same response out of both, in such a manner it highlights the liar.

When you ask a guard “what will the other guard tell me is the safe passage?”, the lair will lie, and tell that the truthful guard would say the unsafe passage.

The truthful guard will truthfully report that the liar would lie and say the unsafe passage, so whichever way round it goes, you know the safe passage is the one they DON’T say to go down.

Make sense?