Or possibly it wasn’t a treasure, just some object, but if you could get it without walking on the carpet, you’d become the next ruler or something like that?
The way to do it is to roll the carpet up from the edge until you could reach the object.
I’m trying to find a copy of this story.
Never heard of that. But I’ve seen bar bets where someone did that with a glass or coin and a sheet of paper
Well, it appears in issue #23 of Knights of the Dinner Table. ( Available from your local comic book store.) The story’s called It Takes A Thief.
It’s not in the Motif-Index of Folk Literature (at least, not under ‘carpet’ or ‘treasure’). There’s a more specific index to the Arabian Nights which I don’t have; maybe in there?
Was it an apple that the ruler challenged folks to pick up — and none of them figured it out, and so the ruler himself showed them the trick? Sultan Mehmed?
Yes, that’s it! It’s been decades since I read the story. Thanks so much!
Hope there’s no heavy furniture on the carpet.
I’d sit on a serving tray and slide to the middle. I didn’t walk on it.
When I read this story originally, I was a kid. I remember thinking that I could have crawled across on my hands and knees.
Maybe you could just pay a kid (the equiv. of) $5 to fetch it for you. That ruler should come up with some challenges that don’t have a million ways to defeat them.
I’d probably have found a long pole, or something I could use as one.
“Stretch” Pulaski, tallest Pole I know.
Is he ten feet tall?