Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2023
- Messages
- 2,661
Love the manga, but there's a reason so many writers reach for the riddle of the Sphinx when the plot calls for a "brain teaser" type puzzle. It's really damn hard to come up with a good one, something tough but logically elegant and reader-soluble. Here, unfortunately, the supposedly correct answer to each of the butler's three challenge questions is less than satisfactory.
The solution to the first challenge violates its stated terms (as translated, anyway). Of the three possible answers offered by the butler, option #1 specifies that, "the moment you awaken from this slumber, you will be unable to form new memories..." Because the dream occurs prior to the moment of awakening, this would allow the retention of memories formed in the dream, including information about the nature and source of the curse. Option #1 would, therefore, seem much less harmful than #3.
The solution to the second challenge depends on information not included in the terms: Antlia's ability to survive having her head torn off. Without that information, decapitation would not seem to qualify as means of "rescue".
And the solution to the third challenge again violates the terms, albeit in a subtle manner. The butler asks, "...which one of these is unlike the others?" His phrasing hinges upon the word "these", which implicitly limits the subject of consideration to something external (in this case, to the five eyeball monsters seen in panels 2 and 3 on page 20). Presenting the butler himself as the solution therefore seems like a cheat.
These things didn't ruin the chapter for me, but as a fan of logic puzzles, they were a bit of a letdown.
The solution to the first challenge violates its stated terms (as translated, anyway). Of the three possible answers offered by the butler, option #1 specifies that, "the moment you awaken from this slumber, you will be unable to form new memories..." Because the dream occurs prior to the moment of awakening, this would allow the retention of memories formed in the dream, including information about the nature and source of the curse. Option #1 would, therefore, seem much less harmful than #3.
The solution to the second challenge depends on information not included in the terms: Antlia's ability to survive having her head torn off. Without that information, decapitation would not seem to qualify as means of "rescue".
And the solution to the third challenge again violates the terms, albeit in a subtle manner. The butler asks, "...which one of these is unlike the others?" His phrasing hinges upon the word "these", which implicitly limits the subject of consideration to something external (in this case, to the five eyeball monsters seen in panels 2 and 3 on page 20). Presenting the butler himself as the solution therefore seems like a cheat.
These things didn't ruin the chapter for me, but as a fan of logic puzzles, they were a bit of a letdown.
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