Question :-
Once upon a time in ancient times there was a king who was very fond of wines. He had a huge cellar, which had 1000 different varieties of wine all in different caskets (1000 caskets in all). In the adjoining kingdom there was a queen who was envious of the king’s huge wine collection. After some time when she could not bear it any more she conspired to kill her by poisoning all his wine caskets. So she one sentry to poison all the caskets, but no sooner had the sentry poisoned only one wine casket that he was caught and killed by the Royal guards. Now the king had a major problem in his hand so as to identify the right casket, which he gave to the Minister. Now the position had two peculiar qualities Anyone who takes even one drop of poison will die. But, he will die only after one month. The king also gave the Minister 10 prisoners who could be used as tasters, cause there lives was of no consequence to the king of kingdom for that matter, and the Minister was given one month to find the poisoned casket. Is it possible for the Minister to find out in one month? If so how? If not then how many months are required? My solution :- This can be done in one month Think the solution in binary ok first i wanna ask u a question :- how many bits are needed to represent the number 1000 ? yeah u r right -> 10 bits so here is the solution let if any prisoner alive it mean it doesnt die and it will be represented by 1 else if he dies then he will be represented by 0 number the prisoners from 0-9 with 0 the right most (LSB) now what will be binary representation of 0 ? 0000000000 so if 0th bottle is poisoned then all prisoners must die so taste the 0th(actually 1st) wine to all the prisoners. what is binary representation of 1? 0000000001 so taste the 1st(actually 2nd) wine to all except the 0th prisoner. for 2nd, all except 1st (considering 0th as lowest bit) one and so on............. so at the end if suppose 6th and 2nd prisoner(consider 0 min and 9 max) left alive then answer will be :- 1*2^5+1*2^1 +1 (note:- here ^= power) if anyone have more general solution pls let me know *I hope this is useful :) :)* -- **Regards SAGAR PAREEK COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING NIT ALLAHABAD -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Algorithm Geeks" group. To post to this group, send email to algogeeks@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to algogeeks+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/algogeeks?hl=en.