An amusing riddle for intellectual masochists.

[Heartless Angel]

Three goddesses summon you for a game of theirs. The prize for victory, an invite to their next orgy (You know you want in). The penalty for failure, a gruesome death (and perhaps a slightly less entertaining orgy with Hades and his friends). They introduce themselves as Aletheia, the Goddess of Truth, Apate, the Goddess of Lies, and Eris, the Goddess of Chaos. The rules are simple. Each of the three Goddesses disguises their form and voice so that they are indistinguishable to your senses. Your objective is to determine the identity of each Goddess. During this game, Aletheia will speak only the truth, Apate will speak only lies, but whether Eris tells the truth or lies is totally up to her, she will choose at random whether to tell the truth or lie if and when she is asked a question (She has to choose at random again each time she is asked a question). They allow you three and only three questions. The questions must be yes-or-no. Each question must be put to exactly one Goddess. Since they have hidden their identities from you, questions should be posed to left, right, or center (1 2 or 3, A B or C, however the hell you want to do it, what's important is that you can not direct a question towards a Goddess by name, you have no way of knowing who is who other than by their answers to your questions). The Goddesses, however; have elected to make your life more difficult. While they speak in your language now, once the game begins, they will only give their answers in the language of the Gods, in which the words for yes and no are "va" and "sa". You do not know which word means which, and they will not answer any questions until the game begins, at which point they will only answer the questions using those terms. You may ask one Goddess more than one question, you may not have to ask a particular Goddess any questions, you don't have to come up with all of your questions at once, you may base your second question on the answer to the first, and the third on the answers to the first and second. There is no pattern to Eris' choice to tell the truth or lie, she will choose at random.

[noxious.sunshine]

what. the. eff.

I mean. I'm sure there's a way to figure this out, but... yeah.

[loaf]

google.com


Riddle solved.

[Rowan]

Three goddesses summon you for a game of theirs. The prize for victory, an invite to their next orgy (You know you want in). The penalty for failure, a gruesome death (and perhaps a slightly less entertaining orgy with Hades and his friends). They introduce themselves as Aletheia, the Goddess of Truth, Apate, the Goddess of Lies, and Eris, the Goddess of Chaos. The rules are simple. Each of the three Goddesses disguises their form and voice so that they are indistinguishable to your senses. Your objective is to determine the identity of each Goddess. During this game, Aletheia will speak only the truth, Apate will speak only lies, but whether Eris tells the truth or lies is totally up to her, she will choose at random whether to tell the truth or lie if and when she is asked a question. They allow you three and only three questions. The questions must be yes-or-no. Each question must be put to exactly one Goddess. Since they have hidden their identities from you, questions should be posed to left, right, or center (1 2 or 3, A B or C, however the hell you want to do it, what's important is that you can not direct a question towards a Goddess by name, you have no way of knowing who is who other than by their answers to your questions). The Goddesses, however; have elected to make your life more difficult. While they speak in your language now, once the game begins, they will only give their answers in the language of the Gods, in which the words for yes and no are "va" and "sa". You do not know which word means which, and they will not answer any questions until the game begins, at which point they will only answer the questions using those terms. You may ask one Goddess more than one question, you may not have to ask a particular Goddess any questions, you don't have to come up with all of your questions at once, you may base your second question on the answer to the first, and the third on the answers to the first and second. There is no pattern to Eris' choice to tell the truth or lie, she will choose at random.

you said one lies and one tells the truth, right? Well what if the proposed victory 'orgy' was a lie and the 'gruesome death' was a truth?

[Heartless Angel]

If you need google to solve a riddle, you suck at life. It took me all of about 30 seconds to figure out the problem, and maybe a minute to think of all the second and third questions I'd need to ask in each possible scenario. It's not that difficult really.

EDIT: Rowan, for simplicity's sake, assume it was Aletheia explaining the rules before they disguised themselves, rest assured they won't kill you unless you deserve it. Probably. I hear their orgies do get kind of... anyways that's not important.

[loaf]

I didn't actually attempt the riddle or even go to google lol.

[Sinister]

I didn't actually attempt the riddle or even go to google lol.

Question 1(to all three): Are you a pink elephant?
Question 3(to odd one out) Does one plus one equal 2?()
Question 4(to same): Is Goddess no 1: Eris?
Question 5(to same): Is Goddess no 2 Eris?

Problem solved. <----Undue optimism resulting from 24 hours of wakefulness

-Sin


EDIT: figured it out...nope still figuring it out...damn

EDIT: Again

[Heartless Angel]

You can only pose a total of three questions and each question to only one Goddess. Your solution asks a total of 6 questions.

[Sinister]

You can only pose a total of three questions and each question to only one Goddess. Your solution asks a total of 6 questions.

Sorry, it's late...long day, today. Here you go:

Question 1(to all): Will you tell the truth?(answer will be yes except possibly for Eris, but two will be yes, thus identifying the answer "yes")
Question 2(to all) Are you a pink elephant?
Question 3(to the odd one out): Is Goddess no 1: Eris?


Problem solved.

-Sin

[Heartless Angel]

Again, you can only pose a question to one God at a time. Asking all three the same question takes up all three of your questions. You just asked a total of seven questions.

[Sinister]

...you're just no fun...

-Sin

[Heartless Angel]

What fun would it be if it were that easy? XD

[Polk]

If Hades is voiced by James Woods and he constantly says "feel the heat!" I would totally enjoy an orgy with Hades.

[noxious.sunshine]

I'm already going to the Underworld.

I don't need to solve this riddle -or- have these Goddesses send me there.

[Heartless Angel]

This is Greek mythology, everyone goes to the underworld, good, bad, or otherwise.

[che]

That's why its called underwear.

[noxious.sunshine]

oh yeah huh? WOOPS. I meant Biblical Mythology. hahaha. Hell. Yeah that place.

[Heartless Angel]

In that case, I'll save you a seat.

[loaf]

If this is for intellectual masochists, this topic should be in Int Discussion

[Rowan]

Just letting you know , HA explained the answer, it works, but the answer itself even took me a while to process. Good luck, yall!

[Sinister]

Question to whichever goddess HA chooses: "Do you tell the truth?"


HA answer as how you would imagine them to answer.

-Sin

[Heartless Angel]

Alright. You've asked Goddess A "Do you tell the truth?"

She responds, "Va."

[Sinister]

Goddamn this is hard... I spent all night and a pack of cigarettes coming up with this and it's all I have. If it doesn't lead to an answer then **** it.

Question addressed to same(Goddess A):

If I asked you if va means yes, would you answer in the word in your language that means yes?

[Heartless Angel]

Goddess A responds, "Va".

[Sinister]

Nope... Nope off to ****thatville PM me with the solution. I'm tapping out.

I've humbled myself enough for the time being.

-Sin

[noxious.sunshine]

In that case, I'll save you a seat.

Baller!

[Unknown Entity]

They introduce themselves as Aletheia, the Goddess of Truth, Apate, the Goddess of Lies, and Eris, the Goddess of Chaos. The rules are simple. Each of the three Goddesses disguises their form and voice so that they are indistinguishable to your senses. Your objective is to determine the identity of each Goddess.

Firstly, you wouldn't know which goddess was which as they're hiding their identity. Goddess "A" could be any one of them.

Aletheia will speak only the truth, Apate will speak only lies, but whether Eris tells the truth or lies is totally up to her, she will choose at random whether to tell the truth or lie if and when she is asked a question (She has to choose at random again each time she is asked a question).

If you've played puzzle games, there is usually always one puzzle which requires you to find the person who's telling the truth or telling the lie. The person who is telling the truth will know they're telling the truth, and then answer truthfully. The person telling the lies will always believe that they're the truthful one, and will say the opposite to what they believe to be the truth.

If you take Eris out of the loop, and are only left to discover which Goddess is Aletheia and which is Apate, you only need one question. If you ask either one of them, you'll get the identities to all three Goddesses, as only one Goddess can answer each question, ("Each question must be put to exactly one Goddess.")

Now, you just need to eliminate Eris.

They allow you three and only three questions. The questions must be yes-or-no.

Easy enough.

...they will only give their answers in the language of the Gods, in which the words for yes and no are "va" and "sa". You do not know which word means which, and they will not answer any questions until the game begins, at which point they will only answer the questions using those terms.

...not so easy.

You may ask one Goddess more than one question

Therein lies a trick, I think...

There's three of them, so you can assume that two of the Goddesses will give the same answer.

QUESTION ONE (A): If you are a Goddess, say "va" - if you're not a Goddess, can you say "sa"?
Doesn't do anything yet.

QUESTION TWO (B): If you are a Goddess, say "va" - if you're not a Goddess, can you say "sa"?
If the same answer as the first Goddess (assuming "va" is yes), then you've discovered both Aletheia and Eris.*
If the same answer as the first Goddess (assuming "sa" is no), then you've discovered both Apate and Eris.**
If the answers are completely different, you're ****ed.***

QUESTION THREE (*):

QUESTION THREE (**):

QUESTION THREE (***):


...I'm going to leave this here. Maybe these notes will help someone? If not, I'll come back to this another time. Am I even on a right path, Heartless?

[Heartless Angel]

Not even close with the questions lol.

First of all, va and sa strictly mean yes and no (or no and yes), asking them to use the words to mean something else means you are no longer asking a true yes or no question. The questions must be answerable using yes or no to MEAN yes or no. You might be able to USE someone's answers to get more than affirmation or negation, but they have to be able to answer by simply using affirming or negating terms for the question to be considered yes or no.

If you asked any of the three goddesses if they were Aletheia, both Aletheia and Apate would say yes. Eris would have a 50% chance of saying yes (if she chooses to lie). If you asked if they were Apate, both Aletheia and Apate would say no, and Eris would have only a 50% chance of saying no (assuming she chose to tell the truth). Each of three Goddesses would be able to give the same answer to those questions, so you wouldn't be able to distinguish them that way.

EDIT: If you just meant asking them if they were a Goddess in general rather than a specific Goddess, you would still get one yes, one no, and one random answer with no way to distinguish them. You would need at least one question to translate the terms, the second to begin your process of narrowing it down to two possible candidates for Eris, the third to finish narrowing it down to two, and then being left with a 50/50 guess to finish the job.

Where you WERE on the right track however is in how you simplified the problem. With only a truth teller and a liar left, you can finish in one question, my solution was also to eliminate Eris within two questions. And the hint which I will now provide is this. At the end of my solution, it is still possible that I will not know what their words mean.

[SOLDIER #819]

Hints on finding va and sa? Driving me mad.

[Heartless Angel]

My solution doesn't require me to translate the words, however there are multiple solutions. I DO know a question that will translate the words. Hint, Eris does not choose to say yes or no at random, she chooses to tell the truth or lie at random. If you can come up with a question that must be answered the same way whether you tell the truth or lie (Ie a question that both truth tellers and liars could only answer 'yes'), you can get the translation from any Goddess by posing that question.