Thief and his Penalty

A thief is convicted in Mexico. He gets the death penalty. The judge allows him to say the last sentence to determine how the penalty will be carried out. If the thief lies, he will be hanged, if he speaks the truth he will be beheaded. The thief tells the last sentence and to everybody's surprise some minutes later he is set free because the judge cannot determine his penalty. What did the thief say?




Similar Riddles

Decode below three cipher riddles:

26 L of the A
7 D of the W
1000 Y in a M

Asked by Neha on 17 May 2021


The warden meets with 23 new prisoners when they arrive. He tells them, "You may meet today and plan a strategy. But after today, you will be in isolated cells and will have no communication with one another.

"In the prison is a switch room, which contains two light switches labeled 1 and 2, each of which can be in either up or the down position. I am not telling you their present positions. The switches are not connected to anything.

"After today, from time to time whenever I feel so inclined, I will select one prisoner at random and escort him to the switch room. This prisoner will select one of the two switches and reverse its position. He must flip one switch when he visits the switch room, and may only flip one of the switches. Then he'll be led back to his cell.

"No one else will be allowed to alter the switches until I lead the next prisoner into the switch room. I'm going to choose prisoners at random. I may choose the same guy three times in a row, or I may jump around and come back. I will not touch the switches, if I wanted you dead you would already be dead.

"Given enough time, everyone will eventually visit the switch room the same number of times as everyone else. At any time, anyone may declare to me, 'We have all visited the switch room.'

"If it is true, then you will all be set free. If it is false, and somebody has not yet visited the switch room, you will all die horribly. You will be carefully monitored, and any attempt to break any of these rules will result in instant death to all of you"

What is the strategy they come up with so that they can be free?

Asked by Neha on 10 May 2021

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Can you think of two more such country's unions that could produce similar names like Japanama by overlapping their three letters?

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When a clock is observed, the hour hand is at a minute mark and the minutes hand is six minutes ahead of it.

When the clock is observed again after some time, the hour hand is precisely on a different minute mark and the minute hand is seven minutes ahead of it.

Can you calculate how much time has elapsed between the two observations?

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John was piloting a plane behind a car but was never able to overtake it. Why?

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Make the seating arrangement of 10 children in such a way that there are 5 rows with 4 children in each row.

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I had an infinite supply of water and 5 litres and 3 litres jars.

How would you measure exactly 4 litres in the least number of steps?

Asked by Neha on 18 Nov 2025

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There is a cryptic organization called Cicada 3301 that posts challenging puzzles online, possibly to recruit codebreakers and linguists.