How Kazir Won His Wife

A short story by Raymond Smullyan based on demonstrating unusual versions of Knights and Knaves. Two travellers visit a sorcerer on an island where everyone either always tells the truth or always lies. The sorcerer tells them a story, supposedly from The Thousand And One Nights, of a man attempting to get a king's permission to marry his unmarried daughter by solving various puzzles set by the king involving his two daughters, one of whom never lies and the other of whom never tells the truth.


 * An Aesop (The sorcerer states that the moral of the story he tells is "not to rely on general principles and routine mechanical methods")
 * Cutting the Knot (Kazir )
 * Framing Story (The sorcerer on the island)
 * Genre Savvy (Many characters are familiar with the Knights and Knaves puzzle, and the sorcerer says this has come in handy for him)
 * Knights and Knaves (Many variations)
 * Only Smart People May Pass (The king requires his daughter's suitor to solve puzzles. The purpose is implied to indeed be assessing his intellect)
 * Wrong Genre Savvy (Kazir expects the king's first puzzle to be a normal Knights and Knaves puzzle, and is caught unprepared when it isn't).