Sunday, 18 May 2014

King John Eel and the Poisoned Wine



King John Eel of the emerging empire of The Democratic Peoples Dictatorship, is having a banquet for the Kings and Queens of all of the other countries in the 7 continents of middle earth. To impress them, he has spent all of his country's wealth on 1000 bottles of the finest wine in all of the 7 continents.

However, there is a saboteur in his ranks - he discovers that exactly one of the bottles has been poisoned with Sayonaranide! The kings forensic expert Al Kenny confirms that the tiniest drop of such a lethal poison will trigger a cascade of chemical reactions in the host that will kill the consumer exactly 20 days after drinking it.

"But the banquet is in 3 weeks!" cries King John.

"Fear not!" exclaims the King's chief logician Dan Pu

He knows that there are 10 prisoners on death row, and he proposes to use them to test the wine....

How many bottles of wine can be served safely at the banquet?

[See part 2 of this story]

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