Possibly Poisoned
A cellar holds 1024 bottles of wine. At most one of them is poisoned (possibly none). Before a single round of tasting, you assign each taster a set of bottles to drink from. A taster who drinks from the poisoned bottle dies and a taster who does not survives. After the round you see exactly which tasters died, and from that you must be able to say whether any bottle is poisoned and, if so, which one. What is the minimum number of tasters needed?
Related problems & prerequisites
Worth solving first
- Three Switches, One Bulb 5.0/10
Source: Variation on the classic binary poisoned-bottle puzzle; the 'at most one' twist is original to AxiomIQ.