These funnels were devised by an ancient king to determine which of his captives should die. They contained white sugar pills and black poison pills. Each funnel had a spring release at the end to let one pill fall at a time when the spring was pressed at point A on Fig. 1, which shows a black pill about to fall.
Each captive’s fate depended on the second pill that fell into his hand. He had to replace the first pill in the funnel, no matter what its color, and swallow the second one.
Referring to the picture and description, see if you can answer these questions:
Fig. 2 shows no poison pills. Again supposing that there were 9 captives, where would you put 3 black pills so that none would be drawn as a second choice? Show your solution by blacking in three of the pills.
#1: Captive #8 eats a poison pill.
#2: Put the poison pills in positions 1, 5, and 9.
Excellent! I’m so impressed…