1000 Bottle Puzzle Solution

on Saturday, 23 June 2012
The solution is simple since 2^10=1024>1000 is the answer for this puzzle.Confused let me explain
number the bottles 1 to 1000, and write the number in binary format.
bottle 1    = 0000000001
bottle 250  = 0011111010
bottle 1000 = 1111101000
now take your prisoner’s 1 through 10 and let prisoner 1 take a sip from every bottle that has a 1 in its least significant bit. let prisoner 10 take a sip from every bottle with a 1 in its most significant bit. etc.
prisoner    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
bottle 15    0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1
for instance, bottle #15 would be sipped by 3,2 and 1. that way if bottle #15 was the poisoned one, only those prisoners would die.

1 comments:

rob!e said...

As per this methodology, you need to sacrifice 9 prisoners to identify poison in bottle # 511, which is too cruel! I think you could do it with lesser lives by splitting the total equally among the prisoners alive, as below:

First Attempt:
Target: Poison among 1/1000
Resource: 10
Strategy: 100 bottles/prisoner.
Result: 1 prisoner dies; target reduced to 1/100

Second Attempt:
Target: Poison among 1/100
Resource: 9
Strategy: 11 bottles/prisoner+1 bottle extra
Result: (A) 1 prisoner dies = target reduced to 1/11
(B) All prisoners survive = There's the bottle!

Third Attempt, if Result-A:
Target: Poison among 1/11
Resource: 8
Strategy: 1 bottles/prisoner+3 bottles extra
Result: (A) 1 prisoner dies = There's the bottle!
(B) All prisoners survive = One among those 3 bottles!

Fourth Attempt, if Result-B:
Target: Poison among 1/3
Resource: 3/8
Strategy: 1 bottles/prisoner
Result: 1 prisoner dies = There's the bottle!

Remaining Prisoners = 7

Your answer possess more professionalism than mine, but I am more considerate to the lives of prisoners, as they can taste over 111 bottles at a time which they never going to attain in their lifetime!

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