An evil king has 1000 bottles of wine. A neighboring queen plots to kill the bad 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?


I'll post the answer at the end of the day, if no one figures it out.


EDIT: Nice work Edasaurus and Jackgarlic!! The Unabageler IM'd me the answer and it looks like pfb knew it as well. Nice work guys!! The answer is at the bottom.

 

Clarification: Does the statement this king knows that he needs to murder no more than 10 prisoners to figure out what bottle is poisoned mean that only 10 will die? Or does it mean that he only uses 10 total?

 

If the king's guards know that only 1 bottle was poisoned, how do they not know which 1 bottle it was? I'd hang them all for being idiots!

 

Another clarification: How long is 1 month? 4 weeks (28 days)?

 

I can't give a numerical answer, but if it takes EXACTLY one month (31 days to the second), you could have the prisoners taste a bottle of wine every minute and then keep track of when they tasted each bottle. Taking the time of death in the future, then subtracting exactly 31 days (to the minute) would give you the bottle of wine that caused death.

This assumes, of course, it will work in exactly the same amount of time for each person.

As an aside, opening the wine and leaving it will ruin it. The wine won't be drinkable if they're all tested five weeks previous!

 

i know the answer but i'm not going to say it.

 

And the prisoners would drink half of every bottle too!

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by WestSideBilly
[B]Clarification:

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JonBoy
[B]I can't give a numerical answer, but if it takes EXACTLY one month (31 days to the second), you could have the prisoners taste a bottle of wine every minute and then keep track of when they tasted each bottle.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by WestSideBilly
[B]Another clarification: