Logic puzzle 04062012 !! can you solve this?

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Guest

The Emperor

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?

Replies (4)

CA Ganesh Agarwala

Audit Senior Manager

239 Points Joined November 2011

i think its 999

cheers

ganesh agarwala

Guest

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

Sanket

!..Live to Give..!

16427 Points Joined December 2010

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

RaGHuRaM

The Easy are never Good and the Good are

4957 Points Joined January 2012

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......