A puzzle for you to ponder

[AdamW]

Surely he would take the bear 1.4 miles North West after killing it?

I guess the bear was red (blood)

OK, the wine. It is red wine that needs to breathe for 25 hours so it is being opened anyway.

The baddies have no say on whether they live or die, and the King doesn't care.

Is it in bits then?

BIT stands for Binary digIT... But I know of some three-state systems.

What is a Trinary digIT called?
________________________
moderator

please note 10 a

 

[Igorian]

Eh ? Is this some binary thing ?

Do the baddies know which is the spoilt wine ? Are they averse to dying for the cause ? Did they not have to open the bottle with a corkscrew and stick the cork back in, or does the king favour screw-top ?


Whilst I await the answers, an explorer leaves his camp, marches a mile south and spies a bear. He chases the bear a mile east, shoots and kills it, then carries it the mile north back to his camp. What colour is the bear ?

White, it's a polar bear

 

[Igorian]

Surely he would take the bear 1.4 miles North West after killing it?

He started at the north pole

 

[jtaunton]

Bingo. AdamW go stand in the corner.

On the subject of binary and trinary (?), anyone can count to 1024 on their finger using binary. If you can affect some sort of tri-state with all of your fingers you can count to 3^10 which is.....oh.....quite a lot.

Of course I'm just stalling as I can't think of the answer to the wine question

 

[Igorian]

BIT stands for Binary digIT... But I know of some three-state systems.

I get in a state on Fridays (and some saturdays) does that count?

 

[felix]

How to solve the wine problem:

The first prisoner is made to sample half the bottles. Actually, they ALL have to sample half the bottles but not the same half. Let's number those bottles.

The first prisoner samples bottles 1 to 500.
The second prisoner samples 1 to 250 and 501 to 750.
The third prisoner samples 1 to 125, 251 to 375, 501 to 625 and 750 to 875.

By now you should see where this is leading so I'll skip the rest. The poisoned bottle can be uniquely identified 24 hours later by which time all the prisoners who aren't dead will be rat-a**ed and there won't be much wine left for the banquet.

PS: If the prisoners have heard this one before they will have poisoned bottle number 1000 or, if they prefer to die happy, bottle number 1.

 

[AdamW]

Sounds reasonable, but can you provide mathematical proof that this will work?

There is a much simpler answer First time I heard this one I started trying to draw a 6-dimensional matrix

 

[ninebob]

I think there is indeed a simpler answer. It was stated that the king wants to serve the wine, but at no point was it specified HOW MUCH of the wine he wants to serve.

Therefore, only ONE prisoner has to drink ONE sip from ONE bottle. If, an hour before the banquet, that prisoner is not dead, the king can serve the remainder of that bottle. Not a lot to go round, but it does answer the original riddle.

Of course, if the prisoner does die he can serve the other 999 bottles!

 

[TexMex]

Each prisoner gets a sticky label put on his head.
The labels are numbered with the powers of two (ie. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64,128,256 etc..

Each bottle gets a sticky label starting from 1 through to 10000

looking at the binary representation of the bottle number you can decide which prisoners are forcefed doses of the bottle in question.

Once the poison has taken effect, you simply add up the values of the dead prisoners labels, to deduce the bottle number that is contaminated.

The problem with this solution is that each prisoner gets about 500 doses and may therefore die of alchol poisoning.


Here's a similar one.
You have 10 bags of identical looking gold coloured coins. There are 10 coins in each bag. One of the bags contains real gold coins, while the other nine bags each contain fakes. The fake coins each weigh 1 gram exactly, whereas the real gold coins weigh 1.01 grams. You have a very accurate scale that will measure to the nearest hundredth of a gram. You may only use the scale to weigh one bag of coins. How do you find a genuine coin?

 

[kendor]

Eh ? Is this some binary thing ?

Do the baddies know which is the spoilt wine ? Are they averse to dying for the cause ? Did they not have to open the bottle with a corkscrew and stick the cork back in, or does the king favour screw-top ?


Whilst I await the answers, an explorer leaves his camp, marches a mile south and spies a bear. He chases the bear a mile east, shoots and kills it, then carries it the mile north back to his camp. What colour is the bear ?

White, it's a polar bear! sorry ig just realised there is a page two and you answered it already

 

[petewood]

"I have five sticky labels (don't get me started), two white and three black. Each man will get one label on the back of his head. The first man who can tell me the colour of his own label goes free."

With that he lines them up facing the wall and sticks a black label on each of them. They are then allowed to view each other's labels. Within five minutes one of them announces that he has a black label. The solution is along the same lines as the original puzzle.

Please put me out of my (and my wife's) misery and tell the answer.

 

[kendor]

"I have five sticky labels (don't get me started), two white and three black. Each man will get one label on the back of his head. The first man who can tell me the colour of his own label goes free."

With that he lines them up facing the wall and sticks a black label on each of them. They are then allowed to view each other's labels. Within five minutes one of them announces that he has a black label. The solution is along the same lines as the original puzzle.

Please put me out of my (and my wife's) misery and tell the answer.

He must have realised something dodgy was going on as he was told there would be two white labels but the other four all had black labels so he probably deduced that they were being fooled and in fact all had black labels, am i right?

 

[jtaunton]

I guess that as he can see four black-labels, he knows that the sticker man is lying.

Also, if anyone else could see that he had a white label, they would assume that the sticker man was telling the truth and procalim themselves to have a white label too.

And as no-one did, he must have black as well.





Mind you, there was then a man in one room with three switches marked A, B and C, and a lightbulb in another room that could not be seen from the first room. The man can play with the switches as much as he likes, but go into the lightbulb room only once and say accurately which switch operates the bulb. How ?

 

[kendor]

Mind you, there was then a man in one room with three switches marked A, B and C, and a lightbulb in another room that could not be seen from the first room. The man can play with the switches as much as he likes, but go into the lightbulb room only once and say accurately which switch operates the bulb. How ?

it's to do with timing and how hot the lamp is to touch along with whether it is on or off when he enters the room ie
he switches on A for 10 mins then off then C and leaves it on if he goes in and the light is on then obviously C controls it, if off he touches the lamp if it is warm then A controls it otherwise B controls it.

 

[jtaunton]

Mine just aren't hard enough, I guess. Dod we ever get an answer to the bags of gold ?