Logic puzzle 04062012 !! can you solve this?

i think its 999

cheers

ganesh agarwala

Dear Ganesh... your answer is the Maximum number of prisoners...

The answer is 10 -- only ten prisoners are required to deduce which bottle of wine is poisoned.

The answer is 10....... To find out.....Let's take an example

For suppose there 4 bottles to be tested....Then we can test these bottles using only 2 prisoners i.e. If the prisoners are A and B. A will drink 1st bottle, B will drink 2nd bottle and both A & B will drink 3rd bottle. If A dies --- 1st bottle is ploisoned. B dies --- 2nd bottle is poisoned. Both of them die then 3rd bottle is poisoned.....If neither of them die then 4th bottle is poisoned.....

So, 2 prisoners are used to test 4 bottles.....that is 2²........To test 16 bottles 4 prisoners are used....that is 2⁴ .......

In the same way 10 prisoners are used to test 2¹⁰ bottles that is 1024 bottles.......

So minimum number of prisoners required to test 1000 bottles is 10......