An evil king has 1000 bottles of wine. A neighboring queen plots to kill the bad king, and sends a servant to poison the wine. The king's guards catch the servant after he has only poisoned one bottle. The guards don't know which bottle was poisoned, but they do know that the poison is so potent that even if it was diluted 1,000,000 times, it would still be fatal. Furthermore, the effects of the poison take one month to surface. The king decides he will get some of his prisoners in his vast dungeons to drink the wine. Rather than using 1000 prisoners each assigned to a particular bottle, this king knows that he needs to murder no more than 10 prisoners to figure out what bottle is poisoned, and will still be able to drink the rest of the wine in 5 weeks time. How does he pull this off?
2006-06-21 08:02:12 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous in Entertainment & Music ➔ Jokes & Riddles
I only know this because I've seen it before :)
The trick is to assign every bottle a number from 1-1000, and then represent the numbers in BINARY, using a 10-digit code. So bottle #2 would be 0000000010, for instance. Line the prisoners up and assign each of them a digit in the code. Then start giving them the bottles; if the bottle's code contains a 1 in a given prisoner's position, make him drink. So, for bottle #61, for instance, the code would be
0000111101, so prisoners #5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 should drink. Go through ALL the bottles this way.
After 5 months, some of the prisoners will be dead; they will be all the ones (and ONLY the ones) who drank from the correct bottle. Assign the dead ones a 1, and the live ones a 0, and reconstruct the 10-digit code. That's the poisoned bottle.
Very clever, eh?
2006-06-21 08:18:04 · answer #1 · answered by -j. 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I would do it this way:
1) divide 10 groups of 100bottles. For each group, take a little bit from each bottle and mix it in a new bottle. So now you have 10 bottles of mixed wine. You 1 mixed bottle to each slave. The one that kills, would tell you which 100 bottle has the poison.
2) same as one, except you have now 10 groups of 10.
3) now you have 8 slaves ( worst case) left and 10 bottles. If the first round doesnt kill anyone, just do it again. and you have only killed 3 slaves! yay heheh
2006-06-21 15:29:00 · answer #2 · answered by iamigloo 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
He gets his evil fairy godmother to find out for him. He kills the 10 prisoners because he is just a shite. I dont know but it sounds like a waste of good wine, poisoned or not!
2006-06-21 15:28:51 · answer #3 · answered by Delgado 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
heavens knows, use 100 prisoners in diferent combinations of 10 bottles so no bottle is tested by more than 10 prisoners, the bottle only given to the 10 who die is your culprit
2006-06-21 15:14:38 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
he decides to kill the prisoners- they are from the neighbouring kingdom. by the time the queen hears about this she will surrender and the servant who put the poison in will show them which bottle it was!!!
2006-06-21 15:19:59 · answer #5 · answered by zkimmy 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
All that wine gave me a headache!
2006-06-21 15:09:01 · answer #6 · answered by sue-sue 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
sorry i dont know actually i love scotch
2006-06-21 15:23:41 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
He doesnt,
2006-06-21 15:08:42 · answer #8 · answered by RACHEL 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋