The Poison Puzzle
You are the ruler of a medieval empire and you are about to have a celebration tomorrow. The celebration is the most important party you have ever hosted. You've got 1000 bottles of wine you were planning to open for the celebration, but you find out that one of them is poisoned.
The poison exhibits no symptoms until death. Death occurs within ten to twenty hours after consuming even the minutest amount of poison.
You have over a thousand slaves at your disposal and just under 24 hours to determine which single bottle is poisoned.
You have a handful of prisoners about to be executed, and it would mar your celebration to have anyone else killed.
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?
The answer is 10.
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1 solution
You just need 10 of them. Then you give a code in binary to each bottle and a number to each prisoner. For example for bottle n7
Only prisoners 1, 2 and 3 drink just a little bit ( we still want wine for the party). That way if 1,2,3 die we know it was bottle number 7. That way you have a unique configuration of prisoners for each bottle.
Bonus: Let’s suppose that if they drink a drop they get sick and if they drink two drops they die. What system would need les prisioners?