A delightful puzzle, found this one on the site http://www.mindcipher.com.

So there’s this king. Someone breaks into his wine cellar where he stores 1000 bottles of wine. This person proceeds to poison one of the 1000 bottles, but gets away too quickly for the king’s guard to see which one he poisoned or to catch him.

The king needs the remaining 999 safe bottles for his party in 4 weeks. The king has 10 servants who he considers disposable. The poison takes about 3 weeks to take effect, and any amount of it will kill whoever drinks it. How can he figure out which bottle was poisoned in time for the party?

Note: For younger children, try the same puzzle with 10 bottles and 4 servants!

As always, please send your answers directly to me at alokgoyal_2001@yahoo.com. If you like the puzzle, please share it with others. If you have interesting puzzles to share, please send them to me at my e-mail given above.

Happy wine drinking (only the adults)!