A farmer is standing on one bank of a river, with a fox, a chicken and a bag of grain. He needs to get to the other side of the river, taking the fox, the chicken and the grain with him. However, the boat used to cross the river is only large enough to carry the farmer and one of the things he needs to take with him, so he will need to make several trips in order to get everything across. In addition, he cannot leave the fox unattended with the chicken, or else the fox will eat the chicken; and he cannot leave the chicken unattended with the grain, or else the chicken will eat the grain. The fox is not particularly partial to grain, and may be left alone with it. How can he get everything across the river without anything being eaten?
Leopold chewed on the end of the quill. This wasn't entirely foreign to him. He and all his brothers had gotten tested and schooled in a room not unlike this one. And to tell the truth, what they had been tested on was a lot duller than this sheaf of riddles he was being asked to solve.
What is broken every time it's spoken?
Siegfried worked out the business with the chicken after a lot of playing about with possibilities and the utter ruination of several sheets of foolscap as he drew out river, boat, fox, grain and chicken. It finally occurred to him that you could always take something back over the river, and that was the key — you always kept the two things that might eat or be eaten apart by hauling one back. But this puzzle...
If I say, "Everything I tell you is a lie," am I telling you the truth or a lie?
Leopold snapped his fingers as the answer occurred to him, and he quickly wrote it down. Of course!
Speak the word silence and you broke the silence! Now the next —
Hmm.
Food can help me survive, but water will kill me. What am I?
Siegfried grinned. That one was easy. It appeared in the old sagas all the time. If only some of the things are lies, then the statement that everything I tell you is a lie will always be a lie. He wrote down "lie." Now the next...
The one who makes it sells it. The one who buys it doesn't use it. The one who's using it doesn't know he's using it. What is it?
Leopold snorted. A child could have figured that riddle out. It was fire of course, which needed "food" in the form of wood.
He had been worried at first. He wasn't worried now. If this was the worst they could do, he could get through this.
A coffin... thought Siegfried. That was...a rather too-morbid riddle. He did not like the way this was going.
At the end of the day, thirty-one men emerged from the room filled with tables, surprised at the amount of time that had passed. Some were elated. Some were in despair. All were happy to have the contest over and done with. They fell on the cold buffet laid out for them like starving wolves, and many were surprised at just how tired they were after a day of "only" thinking.
The astonishment came when they all started talking about the riddles and the answers, and compared what they could remember of the riddle test with each other. Because it appeared that no one recalled the same riddles.
No one.
"I don't believe it. Are you sure you don't remember that one?" Siegfried asked a particularly satisfied Prince Roderick, who was sure that he had done very, very well. The Prince shook his head.
"And you don't remember the wizard and the staircase?" the Prince countered. "I thought it was as morbid as your coffin one."
"I know I would have if I'd seen it, wretched murdering wizards..." Siegfried said, feeling more than a little confused now.
He wasn't the only one. No one was out in the garden tonight. The puzzle just grew and grew, as all thirty-one men conferred and cross-checked, and finally came up with the only possible solution there could be.
Each of them had answered an entirely different set of riddles. Impossible as it seemed, somehow thirty-one different tests had been assembled and presented to them.
As they separated, some to go straight to bed, some to drink, some to go straight up in despair and pack, Leopold and Siegfried elected to take the walk out to the King's Arms. They were such regulars there now that they had a preferred table, and the serving boy brought them their drinks before they even sat down. Everyone else that was a regular there knew they were Princes, and no one troubled them about it. Leopold said wistfully that it was just like that inhis favorite tavern, back before he'd left his home. Since in Drachenthal, there were no such things as inns and taverns, Siegfried had merely nodded.