Poisoned Wine

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

You are an evil king with 1000 bottles of wine. One day one bottle of wine is poisoned. You are unsure of exactly which bottle of wine is poisoned, but have 10 prisoners in the dungeon upon which to test.

The poison takes 1 month to kill, and it shows no side effects. You need all of the wine for a party happening in 5 weeks, what do you do?

Solution (Highlight): Arrange the wine in a 10x10x10 cube.
On the first day:
Prisoner 1 will sip wine from the top 10x10x1 square.
Prisoner 2 will sip from the 2nd 10x10x1 square.
...etc...
Day 2:
Prisoner 1 will drink from the first 10x1x10 square.
Prisoner 2 will drink from the 2nd 10x1x10 square.
...etc..
Day 3:
Prisoner 1 will drink from the first 1x10x10 square.
Prisoner 2 will drink from the 2nd 1x10x10 square.
...etc...
After one months time one prisoner will die, that will indicate which 10x10x1 square had poison.
After another day passes one more prisoner will die. That will indicate which 10x1x10 square held poison.
After one more die a final prisoner will die giving us the final 1x10x10 square.

The intersection of these squares will be the poisoned bottle.
It's a long Solution.