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King and 10005
King and 10005
Wertyuio
Dfghjk
Xcvbnm,
Cvbnm,
xcvbnm
To test 10 bottles we need only 3 servants because by using 3 servants there will be a total of 8
possibilities i.e., 23
Wertyuio
Dfghjk
Xcvbnm,
Cvbnm,
xcvbnm
Wertyuio
Dfghjk
Xcvbnm,
Cvbnm,
xcvbnm
Wertyuio
Dfghjk
Xcvbnm,
Cvbnm,
xcvbnm
Case 1: If all the 3 servants live then all the bottles are safe.
Hence we can conclude that by using 3 servants we can find the defective bottle within 8.
Thus, by using only 10 servants, we can find the poisoned bottle among all the 1000 ones as a
possibility after using 10 prisoners will be 210 = 1024, and there are only 1000 bottles.
Alternate Method :
Number the bottles from 1 to 1000, and write the number in binary format.
bottle 1 = 0000000001
and
Let servant 1 take a sip from every bottle that has a 1 in its least significant bit.
Let servant 10 take a sip from every bottle with a 1 in its most significant bit. etc.
servant – 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Bottle 924 – 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0
That way if bottle #924 was the poisoned one, only those servants would die.
line the servants up in their bit order and read each living servant as a 0 bit and each dead
servant as a 1 bit.
The number that you get is the bottle of wine that was poisoned.