Drink !!!

You are the ruler of a mediæval empire and you are to host a celebration tomorrow.

You have 1000 bottles of wine you were planning to open for the festivities, but you find out that one of them is poisoned.

The poison exhibits no symptoms until death, which occurs within 10 to 20 hours after ingestion of even the tiniest amount.

You have thousands of prisoners at your disposal and just under 24 hours to determine which single bottle is poisoned.

What is the smallest number of prisoners you must have to drink from the bottles to be absolutely sure to find the poisoned bottle within 24 hours?

fucl{ them prisoners, i drink them 1000 all! i'll die happy and drunk

if one of the prisoner is a drunkard, he can inhale them all, so 1

Originally posted by Von Bardeleben
fucl{ them prisoners, i drink them 1000 all!

... not such a bad idea...

but there is an intelligent and economical solution.

lemme guess if one prisoner can only drink one... then solution is 999

Originally posted by Von Bardeleben
lemme guess if one prisoner can only drink one... then solution is 999

Nah... far too brutal, Von B...

Hint: think binary!

Originally posted by Mathurine
Nah... far too brutal, Von B...

Hint: think [b]binary![/b]

you have to be more specific. for .i.e, how many bottles can one prisoner drink?
if one prisoner can inhale infinite, then the solution is 1...

Originally posted by Mathurine


Hint: think [b]binary![/b]

I dont think von B is capable of doing that...

Originally posted by Von Bardeleben
you have to be more specific. for .i.e, how many bottles can one prisoner drink?
if one prisoner can inhale infinite, then the solution is 1...

no he does not have to be more specific.

if one prisoner drinks from all the bottles, how the hell could they find out which bottle killed him?

Originally posted by Von Bardeleben
you have to be more specific. for .i.e, how many bottles can one prisoner drink?
if one prisoner can inhale infinite, then the solution is 1...

The question - quite specifically - says "drink", not "inhale"...

Originally posted by Jusuh
no he does not have to be more specific.

if one prisoner drinks from all the bottles, how the hell could they find out which bottle killed him?

well...one prisoner CANNOT in hale more than one bottle of beer
here's my demonstration:
he drinks one at 0th hr
he drinks another one at 11th hr
then by the 24th, the 2nd beer might not have started its effect.

Sorry, but where does beer enter the problem??

Originally posted by Mathurine
Sorry, but where does beer enter the problem??

i think you poisoned them, so only you would know the solution

Any sensible solutions to the problem?

Originally posted by Mathurine
Any sensible solutions to the problem?

I can do it with 10. Treat each prisoner like a binary digit. For the nth bottle, give a tiny amount to the prisoners who make up the binary representation of n.

E.g. 500 = 111110100

So give a tiny bit to prisoners 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7.

Once you know who's died, they will give the binary number of the poisoned bottle. You need 10 because 2^10 = 1024.

Any good?