Posers and Puzzles
23 Jan 07
23 Jan 07
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?
23 Jan 07
1 edit
Originally posted by Von Bardelebenno he does not have to be more specific.
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...
if one prisoner drinks from all the bottles, how the hell could they find out which bottle killed him?
23 Jan 07
Originally posted by Jusuhwell...one prisoner CANNOT in hale more than one bottle of beer
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?
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.
23 Jan 07
Originally posted by MathurineI 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.
Any sensible solutions to the problem?
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?