Riddles!

[Idontwantspam]

OK, here goes.

The King is holding a huge party in 10 days. There will be lots of food, partying and, of course, wine.

The King's wine cellar has 1000 bottles of wine in it. He knows that an assassin sneaked into the wine cellar at night and poisoned 1 bottle of wine. In order to not poison his guests, he is going to try to establish which bottle is poisoned. He has 10 prisoners. How can he use the prisoners to determine which bottle is poisoned? Yes, one or more prisoners could die. They can drink as much wine as they want (or are asked to) without getting alcohol poisoning. Additionally:

1. The poison has no odor, taste, texture or other way to determine its presence. The only way to know is that it will kill.
   
2. The poison takes 9 days to have an effect. There will be only time for one test before the party.
   
3. There is no way to tell which bottle has been opened.
   
4. Only one bottle has been poisoned.
   
5. More hints to come upon request...
   
6. IF YOU KNOW IT, THEN YOU HAD DARN BETTER NOT GIVE IT AWAY!!!!! OR ELSE!!!
   

So, that's it. Let's see who gets it first! I have bolded things that you should read again before asking for clues. Good luck!

Edited October 3, 2007 by Idontwantspam

[cluberti]

I think you're short two prisoners, although if done right only 8 of them will die in a worst-case scenario .

[Idontwantspam]

Nope. 8.

Clue: If he orders 2 more cases of wine, and they get accidentally mixed in with the rest, he'll still be able to do the test. Any more than that, and he will be unable to determine which one is poisoned.

Think of the importance of the numbers, particularly what I just told you.

Edited October 3, 2007 by Idontwantspam

[mark]

12 bottles of wine to a case? 12,000 bottles total?

[Idontwantspam]

Oops. 1000 bottles of wine. My bad. He gets 2 more cases though.

[spacesurfer]

Thanks for clarification. I was using 12,000 bottles.

[Idontwantspam]

[ripken204]

you must be mixing something up b/c 9 days for the poison to have an effect? why would that matter at all?

couldnt you just say it takes 1hr to take effect and the party is in 2hrs? b/c no matter what, for all the prisoners to test it out and to see what the outcome is, it is going to take those 9 days, so im just not seeing how it would matter for the days..

[Idontwantspam]

That particular part could be changed - it could take an hour to have effect and the party could be in 2 hours, sure. BUT the point of that part of the riddle is that there is ONLY one chance to figure it out.

Hint:

1000+12+12=1024

And yes, there is an answer that would work.

Edited October 1, 2007 by Idontwantspam

[NOTS3W]

I know how this could be done with 10 prisoners, but not with 8. So I'm all ears for the answer.

[Mijzelf]

I know how this could be done with 10 prisoners, but not with 8. So I'm all ears for the answer.

Of course you could subdivide the 1024 bottles in 256 parts, but then the King would waste 3 bottles, which is unacceptable.

[Idontwantspam]

Nope. 8 prisoners. They will know exactly which bottle was poisoned, and only have to remove that one.

Think about the relationship between the numbers 1024 and 8.

Edited October 3, 2007 by Idontwantspam

[mark]

1024 bottles, eight prisoners drink 128 bottles each. Hour later eight prisoners drink from 16 bottles from each of the other groups of 128 bottles. Hour later, each prisoner drinks 2 bottles from each of the other groups of 16. Hour later each prisoner drinks 2 different bottles from the groups of 16 but not any same pair as what any other prisoners have drunk. Four dead prisoners. You keep the paperwork up to determine which bottle. I think that works.

Edited October 2, 2007 by DL

[Idontwantspam]

Darn. It. All.

OK, I just realized, it IS 10. The guy who told me the riddle said 8 , and had to tell me the answer, so I never bothered to check the math.

I am VERY, VERY sorry. I have definitely botched this riddle... I hope you can still figured it out and still care.

And DL, nope.

:blushing:

[NOTS3W]

If we can get down to the hour that the poison will take effect (not just 9 days, but 216 hours after it's ingested), we may be able to define the minute. In that case, ONE prisoner samples each bottle, each minute, for 999 minutes. 12,960 minutes after he starts, you wait to see if he dies. For each minute he stays alive, you can consider the corresponding bottle safe. If he dies, the corresponding bottle was the poisoned bottle. If he doesn't die after 999 minutes of waiting and watching, you know the last untasted bottle was the poisoned bottle, and NO ONE dies. Somehow, I don't think that's the solution, though.

If you use ten prisoners, you line them up with each representing a binary digit and number the bottles 0 through 999. Prisoner #1 drinks from bottle number one. Prisoner #2 drinks from bottle number two. Prisoners #1 and #2 both drink from bottle number three and so on:

prisoners lined up

(ones represent who drinks)

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 = bottle number 1

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 = bottle number 2

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 = bottle number 3

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 = bottle number 4

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 = bottle number 5

etc.

1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 = bottle number 999

No one drinks from bottle number 0.

After nine days, you line them up in the same order, dead or alive. Dead prisoners are ones, living prisoners are zeros. If the line looks like this: 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 (a binary number), it equates to bottle number 341 (a decimal number) that was poisoned. You discard bottle 341 and it's on with the party!

If the line looks like this: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0, it equates to bottle number 0 that was poisoned.

If the line looks like this: 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1, it equates to bottle number 999 that was poisoned.

The problem is that Idontwantspam insists on using only 8 prisoners and you cannot represent 1000 (or 1024) decimal numbers with only 8 binary digits. 11111111 binary = 256 decimal. Unless you divide the day into four quarters and can get that finite about the amount of time the poison takes to be effective, I still don't see how you can do it with only 8 prisoners and only losing one bottle.

If each taste was from a combination of four bottles, one from each quadrant of the wne cellar, you could do the same thing (i.e. prisoner 1 drinks from bottles 1, 257, 513 and 769 in the first taste above). If only he dies, you would know it was one of those four bottles, but not which ONE bottle.

So tell us already. What's the answer?