Riddles in the Dark - Total War Heaven Forum

Topic Subject: Riddles in the Dark

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Edorix
High King of Britain

posted 05 September 2009 14:26 EDT (US)

RIDDLES IN THE DARK

This thread is a Riddle Game. Someone asks a riddle, everyone else tries to guess an answer. The rules are as follows; please take the time to read them, it shouldn't take long. Please note that there are no turns.

EDIT: IMPORTANT!!! Game ended. Round II available here.

Rule 1: Nobody is allowed to start a new riddle until the previous riddle has been solved, and the riddler has acknowledged the answer and who gave it.

Rule 2: No more than five riddles in a row posted by the same forumer - unless that forumer's name is Edorix. As Riddlemaster, I can post as many as I like if I feel it is necessary to keep the game going.

Rule 3: If no-one guesses the riddle within five days from when it was posted, the riddler must give the answer. If they do not do so within 24 hours, someone else has the right to start a new riddle. If you have set a riddle, please check this thread regularly to see if anyone has answered it so we can keep moving.

Rule 4: The riddler may extend the guessing deadline if he chooses by simply making a post saying so. No longer than an extra couple of days though, please.

Rule 5: Please put riddles and/or answers in bold italics. That way everyone can see what parts of your post are comments and what parts are answers. Also, please use clear formatting to facilitate the reading of other riddlers.

Rule 6: If you know the answer to a well-known or published riddle, please do not post it immediately. Wait for some time to elapse, a day or so at least, to give the other riddlers a chance to guess. Likewise, if you don't know the answer to a riddle, do try to guess, instead of using some book or search engine to find the answer. This is cheating, and takes the fun out of the game for everyone else.

Rule 7: If possible, try and reword your riddle to a theme suitable for the Bardic Circle. For example, I do not think that the Bardic Circle is a place for spaceships, so if the riddle you want to post is set in a spaceship, try to change it to something more appropriate to the TW time-frame.

Don't just make up riddles off the top of your head; they have to be remotely possible to solve. For example, "What is the difference between a duck?" does not count as a riddle.

I may implement more rules as we go along and holes in the game's structure become apparent. If you have any suggestions for the betterment of these rules or any other aspect of the game, please do not hesitate to voice them.

Finally, I advise other riddlers not to give a reference to where their riddle comes from (unless that is a copyright breach) or somebody may cede to the temptation to look it up, but I'll start with a famous one from The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien.

--------------------

"I am Mr. Bilbo Baggins. I have lost the dwarves and I have lost the wizard, and I don't know where I am; and I don't want to know, if only I can get away."

"What's he got in his handses?" said Gollum, looking at the sword, which he did not quite like.

"A sword, a blade which came out of Gondolin!"

"Sssss," said Gollum, and became quite polite. "Praps ye sits here and chats with it a bitsy, my preciousss. It like riddles, praps it does, does it?" He was anxious to appear friendly, at any rate for the moment, and until he found out more about the sword and the hobbit, whether he was quite alone really, whether he was good to eat, and whether Gollum was really hungry. Riddles were all he could think of. Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with the funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago, before he lost all his friends and crept down, down, into the dark under the mountains.

"Very well," said Bilbo, who was anxious to agree, until he found out more about the creature, whether he was quite alone, whether he was fierce or hungry, and whether he was a friend of the goblins.

"You ask first," he said, because he had not had time to think of a riddle.

So Gollum hissed:

What has roots as nobody sees,
Is taller than trees

Up, up it goes,
And yet never grows?

[This message has been edited by Edorix (edited 11-11-2010 @ 11:21 AM).]

Author

Replies:

Captiva
Legionary

posted 05 September 2009 15:14 EDT (US) 1 / 543

Greed

Airicci2
Legionary

posted 05 September 2009 15:26 EDT (US) 2 / 543

Mountains

Airicci2... Rome Total War Fanatic

Pontus AAR

matt will
Legionary

posted 05 September 2009 15:35 EDT (US) 3 / 543

Damn you beat me to it Airicci2. I was going to say Mountains.

My Gondor hotseat campaign. Please Help!

Under the White Tree A Gondor short story on the fall of Minas Tirith.

Edorix
High King of Britain

posted 06 September 2009 01:41 EDT (US) 4 / 543

Airicci, you got it. The answer was indeed a mountain.

Captiva, "greed" is a good idea, but I'm guessing you never read The Hobbit.

Who's got one next?

Please put riddles and/or answers in bold italics in future. That way we can see what parts are comments and what parts are answers.

[This message has been edited by Edorix (edited 09-06-2009 @ 07:53 AM).]

DietrichStahl
Legionary

posted 06 September 2009 01:58 EDT (US) 5 / 543

Hmm... Greed is interesting, although it does grow.

Here's a strange one:

You have been zapped into this room by means unknown. There are two doors on one side of the room, there are two computers. It even seems they are each guarding a door.

There are two signs, and a leper in the room with you.

The first sign reads:

"Behind one door is Godly realization. Behind the other door is a room painted entirely green. The only things in that room are a man and a ladder, both of which are painted entirely green. The man has been hired by the coalition of Gangsta Rappers to hurl a non-stop barrage of insults at anyone who enters the room. " (end sign 1)

The second sign sits between the two computers (also the two doors) and reads as follows:

"One of these computers is programmed to lie to you regardless of how friendly you are to the user interface, the other computer is programmed to tell the truth, regardless of your emotional state."

It is about this time that the gangrenous leper begins to speak "I get you deal on phone time $.08 minutes weekdays all odd hours. $.10 on Thursday except the hour between 2:00 and 3:00, or any registered birthday . . . "

He begins to - quite slowly - lurch towards you, he's already reaching out towards you, you get the sense he's a "touchy-feely" sorta person. You quickly calculate you have time to ask one computer one question before he reaches you. The riddle before you is this: What question do you ask, and to which computer do you pose your question? Remember, you don't know whether the computer's answer will be a lie, and you've got to figure out which door to go out.

Hint: It doesn't matter which computer you ask, i.e. there's an answer for both.

Edorix
High King of Britain

posted 06 September 2009 03:37 EDT (US) 6 / 543

Oh, that's a classic. I won't give the answer yet.

Which I know of course...

I'm just keeping you all in suspense...

Okay, the real reason is that it's too confusing to argue out in my head and I don't want to get it wrong.

--------------------

EDIT: Okay, I'm gonna have a go.

Go to one of the computers - either of them. Ask it: "If I asked the other computer, which would he say was the correct door?"

If the computer says, "the one on the right", take the one on the left, or vice versa.

Let's assume the door on the right is the correct one. If the computer you used was lying, and the other was telling the truth, then you know that the other would say the door on the right is the correct one, because the computer that was lying would say "the door on the left". If the computer you used was telling the truth, then the other must have been lying; the computer you used is telling you truthfully that the other computer would be lying and say "the door on the left". So, either way, you know to take the door on the right.

Whether you'll have time for all that reasoning before the leper reaches you, I don't know.

Did I get that right, or did I miss something crucial?

--------------------

In future, can we re-word these riddles to a vaguely war-story theme? This is the Bardic Circle, after all.

[This message has been edited by Edorix (edited 09-07-2009 @ 11:41 AM).]

Edorix
High King of Britain

posted 06 September 2009 11:35 EDT (US) 7 / 543

For impatience's sake, I have changed one of the rules:

Quoted from Myself:
If no-one guesses the riddle within three days from when it was posted, the one who gave the riddle must give the answer. If they do not do so within 24 hours, someone else has the right to start a new riddle.

Instead of a week, there are now only three days in which people may guess answers to the current riddle. This is to try and keep the pace of this thread moving, even if it's a really hard riddle.

Terikel Grayhair
Imperator
(id: Terikel706)

posted 06 September 2009 11:42 EDT (US) 8 / 543

Quoted from Edorix:
In future, can we re-word these riddles to a sort of war-story theme? This is the Bardic Circle, after all.

Bards=Storytellers.

Bardic Circle= where stories are told.

Stories, tales, riddles, things written.

Not limited to War Stories. Limited only to stories and the likes of which bards, skalds, poets, authors, writers, and minstrels talk about and do.

So no worries.

|||||||||||||||| A transplanted Viking, born a millennium too late. |||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||| Too many Awards to list in Signature, sorry lords...|||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||| Listed on my page for your convenience and envy.|||||||||||||||||
Somewhere over the EXCO Rainbow
Master Skald, Order of the Silver Quill, Guild of the Skalds
Champion of the Sepia Joust- Joust I, II, IV, VI, VII, VIII

[This message has been edited by Terikel Grayhair (edited 09-06-2009 @ 11:47 AM).]

Edorix
High King of Britain

posted 06 September 2009 11:57 EDT (US) 9 / 543

Oh, don't give them excuses!

If I wanted to write a story about pink bunnies, that wouldn't belong in the Bardic Circle now, would it?

On second thoughts, don't answer that. I have NO intention of writing a story about pink bunnies.

[This message has been edited by Edorix (edited 09-07-2009 @ 11:35 AM).]

Edorix
High King of Britain

posted 07 September 2009 11:39 EDT (US) 10 / 543

DietrichStahl, two days until you must reveal the answer to your riddle. I take it, as you have not checked back to validate my solution, that I was wrong.

The second reason for this post is that I have added TWO new rules:

Quoted from Myself:
If you set a riddle, you must wait for another three people to have set their riddles before you can set one again. If you set one regardless, I, as Riddlemaster, will make a post annulling it.
If you set a riddle, please check back regularly to see if anyone has answered it, so as to keep the thread moving.

DietrichStahl
Legionary

posted 07 September 2009 19:52 EDT (US) 11 / 543

Sorry lol. Edorix answered correctly.

Ask either computer which door the other computer would say leads to the green room. If you choose that door, the answer will be incorrect.

JrvUnleashed
Legionary

posted 07 September 2009 21:20 EDT (US) 12 / 543

Not sure how well known this is, but I heard this a while back and I thought it was pretty funny.:

A man shoots his wife in the head, submerges her head entirely in water for 30 minutes, and then hangs her overnight. The next day she's perfectly fine and they enjoy a nice day together. How is this possible?

"Communism is like a Mistress you later learn is a Mister and no amount of showers will ever wash away the shame.
Capitalism on the other hand is like the bosom of a women fresh out of the kitchen with sweat on her brow and enough milk to feed a village of children for weeks. And I'll tell you something: I. Want. That. Bosom."

Terikel Grayhair
Imperator
(id: Terikel706)

posted 08 September 2009 02:07 EDT (US) 13 / 543

He took her photograph

JrvUnleashed
Legionary

posted 08 September 2009 02:12 EDT (US) 14 / 543

Yep. Took a picture of her head, developed it under water, and hanged it out to dry over night.

DietrichStahl
Legionary

posted 08 September 2009 02:18 EDT (US) 15 / 543

You had me stumped on that one. I knew the shooting her part was a photograph, but couldn't piece the rest of it together.

Nice one!

[This message has been edited by DietrichStahl (edited 09-08-2009 @ 02:50 AM).]

Terikel Grayhair
Imperator
(id: Terikel706)

posted 08 September 2009 02:41 EDT (US) 16 / 543

Here's one, fresh out of my mind:

My ancestors felled trees, while I cut down men.

My descendants are many and varied-
some thin like bamboo,
others bending like reeds in the wind,
while others are tapered pillars,
and yet others like the surface of a pond with a stone cast within.

I have lasted millennia, and still exist today.

What am I?

EDIT: reformatted for clarity and ease

[This message has been edited by Terikel Grayhair (edited 09-09-2009 @ 03:41 AM).]

JrvUnleashed
Legionary

posted 08 September 2009 02:57 EDT (US) 17 / 543

A redwood tree?

An axe?

[This message has been edited by JrvUnleashed (edited 09-08-2009 @ 03:00 AM).]

Edorix
High King of Britain

posted 08 September 2009 12:21 EDT (US) 18 / 543

Terikel, you haven't put your answers in italics! Tut, tut.

Oh, and Jrv, do you think I should make a rule about only one guess per post?

Okay, no I won't.

I'd go with axe, but it doesn't seem poetic enough...

Terikel Grayhair
Imperator
(id: Terikel706)

posted 08 September 2009 13:17 EDT (US) 19 / 543

Quoted from Edorix:
Terikel, you haven't put your answers in italics! Tut, tut.

Harping on Formalities is a way of saying you have too much time on your hands and nothing else better to do.

So, in the theme of being a Cold-Hearted Bastard as in my latest article, screw off!

I emboldened the riddle- that should suffice to separate it from eventual trivial comments, should it not?

As to axe, as given by Edorix and JrvUnleashed... well, it is wrong. Thus I did not deign to answer. Keep trying. Once the answer is revealed, it really is quite a simple riddle.

See you guys in two more days, unless someone deduces the correct reply in the meantime.

JrvUnleashed
Legionary

posted 08 September 2009 13:22 EDT (US) 20 / 543

Now Terikel, isn't that hypocritical to say he has too much time on his hands and nothing better to do, when you write every article you make entirely in old English?

matt will
Legionary

posted 08 September 2009 13:34 EDT (US) 21 / 543

Is it metal?

My Gondor hotseat campaign. Please Help!

Under the White Tree A Gondor short story on the fall of Minas Tirith.

JrvUnleashed
Legionary

posted 08 September 2009 13:58 EDT (US) 22 / 543

Of course, that's makes sense

"My ancestors felled trees" Metal axes.

"while I cut down men." Swords, axes, arrows, spears, etc.

"My descendants are many and varied-"Metal takes many forms.

"some thin like bamboo" Aluminum.

"others bending like reeds in the wind" plenty of metals bend.

"while others are tapered pillars" strong metals like iron, steal, etc.

"and yet others like the surface of a pond with a stone cast within." Mercury.

"I have lasted millennia, and still exist today." Metal

DietrichStahl
Legionary

posted 08 September 2009 20:39 EDT (US) 23 / 543

Hmmm. Is it a tornado?

Terikel Grayhair
Imperator
(id: Terikel706)

posted 09 September 2009 03:39 EDT (US) 24 / 543

You guys were in the neighborhood, but ... no

By the way, not all things made of aluminum are thin. You can make an I-beam of aluminum, or a ship's crankshaft, or many other large things.

Dietrich- it is not a tornado.

Hint: think poetic.

EDIT: I will re-format the riddle so it is easier.

[This message has been edited by Terikel Grayhair (edited 09-09-2009 @ 03:40 AM).]

Andalus
Legionary

posted 09 September 2009 07:02 EDT (US) 25 / 543

Disease?

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