Tarot always forgets Peanut's real superpowers are creativity and imagination.

Old-Timey Panel 1 Peanut is adorable.

And here comes Peanut in his deus ex machina form.

Don’t question it, Tarot, Your boyfriend is more useful than you assumed.

‪That dog with the totally awesome hat nailed it ! He’ such a... puzzle master ‬

Of course the computer wouldn't suggest you asking a paradoxical question. It's an illogical response.

Panel 3 Tarot, what is that face?

So, who was slowing you down again?

Peanut.....nice.... Also Tarot's expressions are on point! Gonna love hearing her thoughts on Peanut now.

Sometimes that guy is stunning
and he’s left Tarot in his dust
as Petes’ temple lets the fun in
and it’s ‘mana pool or bust!’
He beat her on brain power,
the enigmatic pup,
and now we’ll see the shower
try hard to just keep up.
So Tarot’s dream of first
withers on the vain
and Dallas’ tricorder burst
and won’t be used again.

Yeah, the tricorder broke, but if Dallas has all the powers of a Starfleet engineer, he can have that thing going again by the next scene........

Unless the plot requires that it remain broken. (Star Trek: Consistently Inconsistent)

Um, how does Peanut actually know the right route? He found the random head, sure. By blowing up the others. Doesn't one direct you to a death trap?

EDIT. Nevermind. No passages, just heads.

Peanut rejects your logic and substitutes his own.

I don't think Pete planned for a mortal to be smart enough to logic bomb the heads.

...Or that was the way to escape the head puzzle, since nearly all Mortals at the time the temple was created, blindly followed and preached of their religons, and would believe that their 'god' would 'show them the path'.

If it's the latter, then it's brilliant. And I think the puzzle was meant to open the path, with the Spiked Crusher being to prevent anyone from trying to just smash the stones and find the random head. Joey never said that the exit was behind the heads, just that they had to solve the puzzle.

knowing Pete this was likely the intended answer.
now I wonder if the temple is just feeding him the answers to the puzzles or just giving him hints.

I love the expressions!

I would find it very amusing later on if Tarot and Peanut found out the puzzle hat did nothing for Peanut except make him more reckless at answering questions... and find out Pete really never accounted for the kind of answers Peanut gave. =P

all in all, I'm amused by both Peanut and Tarot's reactions in this comic today. <3

Can't believe I'm doing this... It's 3:30 AM, I have class tomorrow, and I made an account all because something's confusing me about the question Peanut asks.

Let's first assume that "BO" means "yes" and "LAL" means "no", so Peanut's question becomes "Would you answer 'yes' to the question 'will you answer 'no' to this question?'" Since the second half of this question is a paradox, it would kill both the truthful and the lying heads (assuming the lying head has to know how it would answer the paradoxical question to be able to lie).

But alternatively, "BO" means "no" and "LAL" means "yes." Peanut's question translates to "Would you answer 'no' to the question 'will you answer 'yes' to this question?'" The inner question isn't a paradox this time, which means you could answer Peanut's question as "yes" OR "no" and have it be either a lie or the truth, depending on how you felt like answering the inner question.

So are we to assume that "BO" meant "yes" and "LAL" meant "no", and that Peanut was unprepared for the alternative? Or is there another rule to the heads I'm not seeing here?

The only explanation I could come up with for Peanut's question being flawless, is that the truthful head NECESSARILY has to tell the truth and the lying head NECESSARILY must lie. Since the inner question "Will you answer 'yes' to this question?" could accept either answer, there's no way to definitively tell the truth or definitively tell a lie about how you would answer the question without actually getting to answer the question.

Anyway, hi everyone, I've followed the comic since 2010 but never got a forum account. Nice to finally be a part of the community, hope you're all having a good morning/afternoon/evening/night.

Also, Peanut is awesome. I'm loving this arc, I can't wait for Monday.

Peanut solving puzzles LIKE A BOSS
And I also love those expressions

That's her face when she tries to keep her head from exploding.

That was perfect! Peanut just strolls in and destroys everything!

Something tells me Rick is going to use this for the title of his 10th book.

"Housepets - No need for Logic"

See? I totally called it. Also, grumpface Dallas is adorable.

Ah, it's great that at least Peanut reached them. And there we go! I knew he got the solution for the riddle. See, Tarot? Peanut can be useful when he uses his fantasy.
Tarot's face in the third panel is priceless.

Neither is technically paradoxical. The logic here is either
Would you answer yes to "will you answer no"?
<True: no ("BOOM"; therefore, no)>
<False: no or yes (yes or no; therefore, the same)>
or
Would you answer no to "will you answer yes"?
<True: no or yes (yes or no; therefore, the opposite)>
<False: yes ("BOOM"; therefore, no)>

Peanut is apparently relying on two assumptions: First is that both statues will try to answer the inner tier instead of reasoning that, no, they wouldn't answer LAL, because exploding doesn't count as a LAL answer. Second is the assumption that the statues cannot answer a question with two equally valid answers.

Altogether, that's very shaky reasoning. It would have been simpler to address all three and ask 1 "Will you answer BO to this question?" and 2 "Will you answer LAL to this question?", as 1 will make the LAL-truth head explode, and 2 will make the BO-truth head explode.

AshesAndEmbers, I think I can answer this question. I too was rather confused at first, having gone through the same logical reasoning that you did before looking to the forums for an answer. However, the comment from Dallas in the last panel caused me to realize we both may be logic-ing down the wrong path. At this point, my theory is that Peanut's question caused the statues to explode not because of riddle logic, but because of computer logic. Anyone who works heavily with programming or spreadsheets will probably see where this is going.

Trying to parse Peanut's question out like a machine might, I could easily see his use of "the question" and "this question" in the same statement as confusing, potentially leading to a host of problematic outcomes. For example:

- The computer thinks it is answering one multi-part question with one answer that has to satisfy all the parts, even though we humans can easily separate them into two questions (the "inner/outer") that can have separate answers.

- "This question" can be interpreted as referring back to itself (the question as a whole) thus causing a recursive or circular reference error.

Such an error could be the reason the T/F statues "crashed", trying to resolve the question, while the random statue does not care what the question is and just flips its internal coin. Thinking of it as a computer input error also explains why it would crash Dallas's tricorder, although you would think sci-fi/celestial tech would have better error handling! Then again, paradoxes causing technology to malfunction is a hallmark of sci-fi. (Think HAL or Asimov's "rob-lock".)

And just as a fun aside, there's also the possibility that Peanut's hat grants him far more than just increased puzzling skills. Perhaps he gets more insight into a puzzle, such as knowing what Bo and Lal mean (he can see the code!), or maybe he has the power to tweak puzzles to his advantage.


[Oh, and I also tried to create an account just to comment on this comic, but it turns out I must have created one before and forgot!]

i think peanut cheated. that's technically four questions.

"if i say i'm lying, am i lying?" would have had the same result without needing to nest a question inside a question.

I bet peanut didnt need the hat to do that

I made a comment about the comic, but got a bad gateway error. When my comment finally appeared the question had already been discussed by many others and my response didn't add anything new, so I've removed it. Seems like the forum's server and peanut's logic are both a bit spotty.

Wow this forum page sure got big, I think I can hear everyone's echo!

A Lv1 class that can cast a 0 mana insta-kill spell with 100% chance to hit, fast casting rate, non elemental, has a body explosion after effect and can only be resisted by cratures with the oblivious/deaf trait, trickster classes or really high int/wis...Puzzle Master is OP, plz nerf

i think this thread is broken, i can only see page one despite the reply screen showing numerous posts that are after mine.

Think I got the thread straightened out.

I hope I got the thread straightened out.

I don't know why..... But i really loved this page XD

Aww Tarot had her ego bruised~ She should know by now that Peanut is quite smart anyway. In his own stupid way.

I wonder if she'll address the thing about taking off their hats inside the temple

Eye twitching.

Again...Tarot's head may be the third cranial detonation! Sorry, Dallas, technology is treacherous...

Excellent analysis, everyone, but the comic's riddle solution as written really doesn't make sense. Once you see what the author was going for, it's clear it was a simple mistake. Peanut's goal was to present the statues with a paradoxical question, which is not actually too complicated. "If I say I'm lying, am I lying?" (to quote AshesAndEmbers) would do nicely, perhaps, but this wasn't the author's route. What Rick was trying to do was similar, but he was nesting a question inside a question in order to double the negative of the lying head, and ensure the paradox. Here is what Peanut should have asked each head:

"Question A: Would you answer Bo to the question,
'Would you answer Lal to Question A?'"

This might have been a bit more bewildering to the target audience, but to a logician it's a reasonable two-part nested-question loop that actually works*(see below). It's the solution I think Rick was going for, but he accidentally made the second part refer to itself instead of looping back to refer to the entire question.


*Analysis:
Truth-telling Head, if Lal means Yes:
Suppose I answer Lal(yes). Then Part2 of the question is truthfully answered Yes, so Part1 is truthfully answered No, so I'll answer Bo(no). But then my supposition is false.
Suppose instead I answer Bo(no). Then P2 is truthfully answered No, so P1 is truthfully answered Yes, so I'll answer Lal(yes). But then my supposition is again false.
There is no unparadoxical answer to suppose I answer, so it's impossible to answer correctly. Boom!

Lying head, if Lal means Yes:
Suppose I answer Lal(yes). Then P2 of the question is truthfully answered Yes, so to that I'd answer Bo(no). Thus P1 is truthfully answered Yes, so in the end I'll answer Bo(no). But then my supposition is false.
Suppose instead I answer Bo(no). Then P2 is truthfully answered No, so to that I'd answer Lal(yes). Thus P1 is truthfully answered No, so in the end I'll answer Lal(yes). But then my supposition is again false.
There is no unparadoxical answer to suppose I answer, so it's impossible to answer correctly. Boom!

The logic is similar for Truth-telling and Lying heads if Lal means No. The Lying head's answers are the reverse of the Truth-teller's, but they compound in the two parts (a double negative equals a positive) to have the same net results of paradoxes. And in every case, the Random head will just give a random answer, and not explode.