Author Topic: All The King's Wine  (Read 5343 times)

Offline dm-horus

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All The King's Wine
« on: November 30, 2005, 04:19:37 AM »
Evil king hooman has 1000 bottles of wine. A neighboring queen plots to kill the 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?

Offline CK9

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All The King's Wine
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2005, 10:49:56 AM »
each is assigned 100 bottles to sip from.  they drink at specific times, which are recorded.  When the one shows symptoms, they check the time and match it up as closely to the bottle as possible
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Offline spirit1flyer

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« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2005, 11:11:59 AM »
that might do it but the king wants to drink it after its safe you know :P
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Offline CK9

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« Reply #3 on: November 30, 2005, 11:25:01 AM »
yeah, that's why I said a sip and not the whole bottle :P
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Offline Eddy-B

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All The King's Wine
« Reply #4 on: November 30, 2005, 12:36:54 PM »
i refuse to answer this, because this is almost the same problem as the coins-riddle, i've solved earlier this month.
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Offline Sirbomber

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All The King's Wine
« Reply #5 on: November 30, 2005, 01:47:13 PM »
Strap 10 pounds of C-4 to the guy's crotch and threaten to detonate it if he doesn't tell. Then make him drink it and if he doesn't die you cut his genitals off and make him try another. In the meantime, you've had other prisoners trying other wine.
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Offline Eddy-B

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« Reply #6 on: November 30, 2005, 02:26:29 PM »
uhm: i can do it with killing only 1 prisoner: have 1000 of them drink from the bottles, and 1 will die after a month. Don't drink from that bottle....  but i assume this is not what u had in mind..

.. if you really want 10 dead prisoners: empty the bottle by filling up 9 more glasses, pick 9 random prisoners... or get the really annoying ones, and serve them their wine :D
« Last Edit: November 30, 2005, 02:41:41 PM by Eddy-B »
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Offline Sirbomber

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« Reply #7 on: November 30, 2005, 02:32:49 PM »
That doesn't have nearly enough death and explosions in it.
Oh, I forgot to add that you take the prisoners that don't die and make them suicide bombers and send them at the queen.
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Offline BlackBox

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All The King's Wine
« Reply #8 on: November 30, 2005, 02:41:15 PM »
hmm, hard to say. I'm not good at doing such riddles, and don't really have the time for them either.

I'll stand by Eddy's answer though, if you give 1000 people 1 bottle each, only one will die.

By the way Horus, I don't want to sound mad or anything, but it raised a red flag because of some of your posts in the past. Are you trying to make Hooman look 'evil' or something? I know it's probably in jest but what makes you want to use his nick?

Offline Sirbomber

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« Reply #9 on: November 30, 2005, 02:49:15 PM »
Because everyone knows hooman is a time-travelling wizard that rules a kingdom in the near future. He's here to recruit his Royal Guard.
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Offline dm-horus

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« Reply #10 on: November 30, 2005, 02:52:43 PM »
I think eddy has it. i mentioned hoomans name because freeza screamed his name in ibshout at the time i was posting this.

Offline Sirbomber

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« Reply #11 on: November 30, 2005, 02:55:26 PM »
Oh, sure, of course he has it. If you want the REAL answer...  ;)  
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Offline Hooman

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All The King's Wine
« Reply #12 on: November 30, 2005, 07:53:46 PM »
Yeah, I'm starting to think these poisoned wine bottle questions suffer from lack of important details. I've heard a few clever ways to solve this problem, but if you have that many prisoners, just giving them all 1 bottle is the easier way.

I think the 10 prisoner method was intended to be solved by using 10 prisoners to represent a 10 bit binary number. Since 1000 is less that 1024 which is 2^10, you can tell which bottle is poisoned based on which prisoners die. Label the bottles from 0-999, if that prisoner's bit is set, they drink from the bottle. Then, add up the sum of the dead prisoners to get the index of the poisoned bottle. Note though, that 0 prisoners dead means bottle #0 is poisoned, and all 10 prisoners dead would mean bottle #1023 was poisoned, but... there are only 1000 bottles. So you shouldn't need to ever kill 10 prisoners doing it this way. Only 9 max.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2005, 07:54:04 PM by Hooman »

Offline dm-horus

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All The King's Wine
« Reply #13 on: November 30, 2005, 10:42:26 PM »
i really just posted this because it was the first riddle i saw on a site that has every riddle hooman has ever posted. if you want me to give u the url so you can find answers to future riddles, no dice. the site offers none. but still, google for riddles. youll find some really interesting ones, some alot like my spatial acquity riddle from earlier this month.

Offline Eddy-B

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« Reply #14 on: December 01, 2005, 02:30:28 AM »
googling for answers is considered cheating.
and we don't like cheaters ! (who does?)
« Last Edit: December 01, 2005, 02:30:37 AM by Eddy-B »
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Offline Hooman

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All The King's Wine
« Reply #15 on: December 01, 2005, 03:14:27 AM »
Lol yeah. No googling; that's just no fun.

I'm a little surprised you'd have found all my riddles on one site. I've collected them from quite a varied number of sources really. Most of them from quite a while ago too. (Sometimes with recent reminders they exist though).


Edit: Darnit, wrong king's poisoned bottle of wine riddle thread! Damn you two! Ahh well, I'll leave the rest here for reference anyways.


Well, I was down to 37 bottles in what I'd said earlier. You can further reduce that by dividing the wine bottles into 6 groups, 5 groups of 6 and 1 group of 7? and have each of the 5 servants taste all the bottles in one group (leave one group out, probably the group of 7). That would reduce the number of bottles left to check down to 6 with one death, or 7 with no deaths (if the group of 7 bottles is the one not tasted). At this point, 3 servants must return, and 5 days are left. If you have one servant to test on and 6 possible bottles... I don't really know. Doesn't seem like there is enough time left to test them all in 5 days, and ensure that you've killed him off. Similar case for having 7 bottles left with 2 people to test them.

So, maybe up the risk of losing two people at once? Instead of having each person taste all the bottles in 1 group, they might share bottles between groups. If both people die, you can't do any more testing, so perhaps 1 bottle shared from each group with two people. If they both die, you know the bottle. If only one of them dies, you now have it down to 5 bottles, with 5 days left and 1 tester. If noone dies, we again have 7 bottles, 2 testers, and 5 days. Same problem as before.


Ok, so that leads me to think maybe the 3 people returning and 2 servants have died just happens to be an outcome in a test where more death was possible (and hence moer information could be determined). So 5 people, consider them the bits of a binary number and label the remaining bottles. Then a variable number of people would die in determining if 32 of the 37 bottles had poison. But, you'd still have tasters left no matter what. I suppose they could be used on the remaining bottles, but it would seem to be a problem if people died after you sent them back, so there is a 2 day period in which people you may want to send back can't taste anything. But, if they were poisoned earlier, then they'll die by the time you send them back, so meh. Next day just do another round with fewer people. 5 bottles left, tested on 3 people in the same binary fashion. The thing is, you could end up killing off all 5 people this way. (If bottle #31 is poisoned).

Or just hand out all 37 bottles in that last round. If it is one of the ones at or above #32, then you'll still have the upper bit people left alive to test the remaining bottles where there is ambiguity. It would be 1 of 2 bottles in that case, and you have at least 1 person left alive. If the upper bit person dies, then for sure there is no ambiguity as to what bottle is poisoned after the first round.

Ahh yeah, that last idea seems to work, but you won't be guaranteed to be sending 3 servants back. Ahh well, sucks to be a servant.  :lol:
« Last Edit: December 01, 2005, 03:18:35 AM by Hooman »

Offline TRIX Rabbit

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All The King's Wine
« Reply #16 on: December 03, 2005, 02:41:39 PM »
use pair samples. mix a bottle of small portions of half the total bottles, and do the same and make another. have 2 prisoners each taste a bottle and wait a month. if one dies, use the bottles that the suspect drink was made of. repeat step 1, repeat step2, so on and so forth . the king can drink from the bottles that have been deemed safe.

500 ok ,500 (poisoned)
250 ok, 250 (poisoned)
125 ok, 125 (poi)
at this point, mix 62 and 62 in seprate bottles. split the odd bottle between them. if both die, it is the suspect bottle. keep going if one dies 62.5 ok, 62.5 (poi)
31 ok, 31 poi
repeat the "62.5 step" 15.5 ok,15.5 poi
same as above 7.5 ok, 7.5 poi
same as above 3.5 ok, 3.5 poi
have 2 servants drink 2 of the last 3 bottles if one dies, he drank from the poisoned bottle. if neither die, than mail the last bottle to the evil queen as a good will gift

 
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Offline Eddy-B

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All The King's Wine
« Reply #17 on: December 04, 2005, 05:07:15 AM »
that would be the simple method :)
the smart method would be to use SQR(1000): mix 32 bottles into 1 glass, etc..

SQR(1000)=> 31 are ok, 1 is poisened
SQR(32)=> 5 are ok, 1 is poisened
SQR(6)=> 2 are ok, 1 is poisened
have 2 servants drink from the 2 left over bottles.

that will take considerably less time.
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Offline Hooman

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All The King's Wine
« Reply #18 on: December 04, 2005, 06:59:49 PM »
Eddy, that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. Could you explain that a little more?