This question has perplexed me since the ninth grade. You’re in a room with only two doors. One door leads to death, the other to life. Each door has a guard. One guard always lies, the other always tells the truth. You don’t know which door is which, and you don’t know which guard is which. How do you get out by asking one guard just one question? Is it possible? My math teacher never told us. I think this one is much harder than that stupid “sailors at the motel” riddle. –Thomas Bronaugh, Moore, Oklahoma
I hate to have to correct Cecil Adams, but the business about “the exception proves the rule” in the latest Straight Dope [October 25] seems way wide of the mark. The proverb’s meaning must be expounded not in the context of natural or psychological law but of civil law. Alan Bliss, in A Dictionary of Words and Phrases in Current English, has the following to say about the origin of this phrase: “Exceptio probat regulam [Lat.], the exception proves the rule. A legal maxim of which the complete text is: exceptio probat [or (con)firmat] regulam in casibus non exceptis–‘the fact that certain exceptions are made (in a legal document) confirms that the rule is valid in all other cases.’”
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You can see where an argument like this would come in handy in traffic court. What’s more, it’s basically what Kyle Gann was arguing in his letter in the October 25 column, although he mixed in another much looser interpretation, namely that exceptions call attention to the rule, which obscured matters a bit. Nonetheless he did not deserve the abuse I dished out and I apologize.
