King and the poisoned wine bottle
A ruthless king has a cellar of 1,000 bottles of very expensive wine. An assassin infiltrates the wine cellar to poison the wine. Fortunately the king’s guards catch the plotter after she has poisoned only one bottle. Unfortunately, the guards don’t know which one of the bottles is poisoned. The poison is so strong that no amount of dilution will make it safe to drink. Furthermore, it takes one month to have an effect. The ruthless king decides he will get some of the prisoners in his dungeons to test the wine. But he has only 20 prisoners. King's advisors tell him thats more than enough to find the poisoned bottle. How do they know that?
Sachin
Sachin
Labels: SharedPuzzle
posted by Rajesh Lal at
4:13 AM
32 Comments:
Have the first priosner taste the first ten bottles, second test taste 11-20 and so one for the first ten prisoners. Have eleventh prisoner taste bottles ending in a 1 i.e. 1, 11, 21, 31, ..., 91, The twelfth taste bottles ending ina 2 and so. Two of the prisoners will die, one from the first group wo tells us the first digit, and one from the second group which tells us the second.
Oh wait, sorry thought it said 100, not 1000. :-/ But the idea is on the right tracks.
This way for 1000 bottles you would need 30 prisoners but we have just 20
Idea is good but needs fine tuning
Each of the 20 prisoners samples a different set of 50 bottles. One month later, one dies and you've narrowed the field to 50 bottles and still have 19 prisoners. Each of 16 of these prisoners samples a different set of 3 of the 50 bottles and 1 prisoner samples the remaining 2. One month later, one dies and you've either narrowed the field to 2 or 3 bottles and still have 18 prisoners. Have the 2 prisoners that were left out of round 2 each sample one of the 2 bottles. If your field is three bottles just leave one out. One month later you've identified the poisoned bottle by the prisoner that died. If neither died, the untested bottle is the poisoned one. It might take three months, but you've only lost 2 or 3 prisoners and can still torture the rest.
There are 1000 bottles and 20 testers, each tester is assigned 50 bottles to sip from. After one month, one tester dies. Those 50 bottles he sipped from are suspect.
Assign 10 prisoners to drink from those 50, each tester sips from 5 bottles. After another month, one tester dies - the five bottles he drank from are suspect. Assign 5 testers to sip each of the five bottles. After another month, the bad bottle is found after one of those five dies.
Too easy
Good solution
But King wants to find the bottle after one month only.What could be done now ?
The assassin was from a neighboring rival kingdom. Their king has a taste for wine. The king decides to send a "Goodwill gesture" of 1000 bottles of his best wine for the king only to drink. The king is so pleased, he downs all of the wine in a month-long celebration, only to be dead a month later, at which time the first king takes over his rule, his wine, and his land. Good exchange ;-)
This puzzle is wrong because it is suppose to be only 10 prisoners, if it were 20 I have no idea
puzzle is not wrong
it says 20 prisoners are MORE than enough
Well I guess if it were 10 then:
To do this puzzle you must have an understanding of Binary code, line the prisoners up to where each aligns with a one in its nth position, if it were bottle 924 it would go like this
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
924~ 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0
so if it were bottle 924 that were poisoned, then prisoners 10 9 8 5 4 and 3 would die
=)
Correct answer
Those advisors must have been computer programmers or something
first anonymous had the right idea but wrong number system
using binary instead of decimal we can represent all 1000 bottles with just 10 prisoners and dying or not dying of a prisoner tells us which bottle is poisoned
Eric
i didn't say 10 prisoners because it would be pretty obvious then
one of the prisoners is the assasion so maker them drink untill they tell u
this ones been on before, you assign binary code to them all, thats all i know though
I like own the FBI and here's a funky hunky story. Xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxx x xxx x xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxx xx. Xxxxxxxxxxxx xx x xxxx xxx x xx x x xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xx. Xxxxxx xxxx xxx x xx x xxx xxx x xxxx xxx. The End. oh wait this isn't MySpace.
retardsss!
they caught the person, so they know which bottle it was!
:D
The prisoner assigned binary position 1, has to sample from 500 bottles of wine. He'd better be a party animal.
since there is no time limit, use one prisoner to test the wine.
each day prisoner tastes one wine only.
after a month the first wine is passed as good and is drinkable.
if the prisoner dies count back a months time to isolate the posioned wine.
want faster results, do the same method for all 20 prisoners assigning them 50 bottles each.
case closed.
Each prisoner drinks a bottle a day.Record which bottle is drunk by who on what day. If a prisoner dies, find their record, count back from that day exactly one month and see which bottle they drank on that day.
This may be an overly simple answer, but if the bottle was poisoned, it would have most likely been opened and if not, there is most like a chemical reaction with the poison (or foreign object placed into the bottle to inject it. Therefore, the wine has gone bad. Wait the month until it has spoiled, then smell them. You will only need 1 person for this test (since they won't be tasting anything).
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If the king has patience he can wait a month while one prisoner (who was on death row anyway) taste one bottle of wine per day waiting one month to use the first bottle tested. Lable each bottle with the date that the prisoner would die if that wine was poisoned. When the prisoner dies, note the date and throw away the poisoned bottle. Or better yet, don't kill any prisoners by taste-testing poisoned wine! Throw it all away and start over! The king is rich and his people could use the money he would spend to commission more wine to be made anyway.
The king is a dumb ass, just look for the open bottle of wine.
I think the propper answer is that the first man drinks a mixture of 500 bottles.
If he dies with in a month you make a drink consisting of 250 of the 500 bottles that the first man drank and died. If he did not die you use 250 from the other 500 bottles.
Which ever you find has the poisin you split them in half and make the third man drink a mixture of 125 botthes.
You then split them in 62 and 63 (because 125 is an odd number).
You keep doing this untill you only have 1 left (the poisin one) which u give to your wife as a gift.
haha true, the king is a dumbass. when he finds the open 1 I say split it 21 ways 2 kill all the prisoners and the last part for his wife!!! and if he wanted he could kill himself too and it'd be like Jonestown thing LOL...
And what if one of the prisoner tester die of natural cause in the next month. That wont help at all.
well... i think that the king is secretly gay, and he feels depressed about it... he wants to die so he drinks 99 bottles of wine to find the poisond bottle and die. but he dies b4 tht becuz of liver damage from all the alcahol.. and the very last bottle he didnt drink is the poisond bottle so everyone in town takes a sip bcuz they wanna die cuz their king died... so everyone dies and then live happily ever after in their after life. the end. =) weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
lol ... okay now my real theory ... um ... look for the open bottle. or the one out of place est. easiest thing to do... that way u get to torture all the slaves... yay =)
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Its all junk. The king just dies. I should know, I went to his funeral. I was happy. YAY!AlsoItalkveryfast.
Just assign a group of bottles of wine to one person...50, right something like that? and than after one person dies, just hoard all the rest...I mean, you're giving the prisoners free wine! what's up with that?
I think u r all wrong juss check the corks n what ever one has the cork screw hole in it thats the one... then u torture the guards cuz they did a bad job in guarding the castle :)
You actually only need 10 prisoners to test out the bottles of wine and find out which bottle is poisoned within the month.
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