Introduction to Logic
Tools
for
Thought
 

Wine


The King of a small country invites 1000 senators to his annual party. As a tradition, each senator brings the King a bottle of wine. Soon after, the Queen discovers that one of the senators is trying to assassinate the King by giving him a bottle of poisoned wine. Unfortunately, they do not know which senator, nor which bottle of wine is poisoned, and the poison is completely indiscernible. However, the King has 10 prisoners he plans to execute. He decides to use them as taste testers to determine which bottle of wine contains the poison. The poison when taken has no effect on the prisoner until exactly 24 hours later when the infected prisoner suddenly dies. The King needs to determine which bottle of wine is poisoned so that the festivities can continue as planned. However, he has time for only one round of testing. How can the King administer the wine to the prisoners to ensure that he is guaranteed to have found the poisoned wine bottle?