The King's guards have captured a cunning spy who has managed to operate with impunity for years. He is brought before the Court and the King demands that the spy make one statement.

"If your statement is true," the King says, "you will be killed swiftly by hanging, but if your statement is false you will be killed by stoning. However, if you can make a statement that is neither true, nor false, then you will go free!"

The spy makes his statement, and after doing so the King has to let him go. Can you work out what the cunning spy might have said?

Scroll down for the answer.

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The spy thinks for a moment and then says: "I will be killed by stoning!"

If this statement is true then the King has to hang him, but if he hangs him it was false. By the same token if he sends the man away to be stoned to death then his statement was true, in which case he should be hung. The King has no choice but to let him go. Clever spy!