A version I heard was that you wanted to go to the town of truth tellers so you would ask the man to take you to his town since either way he'll lead you to the truth town.
See, and in the movie that answer (or some version of it) is considered the "correct" answer, because it is derived solely from the logic of the puzzle. "Are you a tree-frog?" (or "What color are your shoes?") is considered cheating, because it doesn't follow the unstated rules of the game.
I think what it's getting at (the same as Diogenes' retort to Plato) is that we impose rules or orthodoxies on how we think about and understand the world. Sometimes this can be very helpful (see, for example, the scientific method), but it can also be limiting. Philosophers such as Diogenes or, in the East, Chuang Tzu seem especially apt at pointing this out.
Actually, my introduction to Chuang Tzu came from the Christian monk, Thomas Merton, who in this
Catholic Answers article is warned against not for being unintelligent, but unorthodox.
lol i didn't think about it. i have a way of overcomplicating things while being straightforward, but yours makes equal sense.
More credit to you then for figuring out the answer so quickly and naturally. It didn't occur to me until I was told; I got stuck trying to figure out the "logical" answer.