The Poison Apple Joke Cider
Cider Season was considered to be one of the highlights of living in Ponyville. There wasn't a whole lot else to look forward to, living in a small town in the country. The odd monster or evil villain invading the town did shake things up, but at least the place didn't have to deal with traffic. And every invasion did at least let the citizens get good exercise from all the running and screaming. And the community picnics as they repaired the town were always excellent.
It was during one such Cider Season that Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, and her old student, Starlight Glimmer, were making their way to Sweet Apple Acres Orchard. This was rather worrying for the pair: the orchard opened for Cider Season in an hour and ten minutes, but Applejack, one of the owners and Twilight's long-time friend, had called them over, claiming that she had an 'awfully big doozie', and that she was hoping the two of them could think of some sort of solution by the time it was time to open up for the locals.
"So what does Rainbow Dash see in it, anyway?" said Starlight as they were walking, "I've never actually tried it for myself. I missed the last one."
"Well, Rainbow says that the taste is to die for," Twilight replied. "I personally think it's best shared with friends. Since, you know, if you just have it by yourself, that's when you need help, if you know what I mean."
"I don't know what you mean," Starlight said, blankly.
"Oh. Well, ask Rainbow. ask about that time she did somersaults after four mugs. I think she still remembers that despite everything." Just then, Twilight turned her head back forwards, and spotted the outline of an orange pony wearing a brown stetson hat. "Oh! There's Applejack!" She waved her hooves at their friend.
The pair trotted up to the farmpony. She looked somewhat tired, as if she had stayed up all night thinking about the problems with the world. Of course, Sweet Apple Acres pretty much WAS Applejack's world, so Twilight figured the analogy wasn't that far off.
Starlight spoke first. "Hey Applejack. You look terrible, no offense."
"Ah FEEL terrible," Applejack sighed. "Cider Season's comin' up any moment and this had to happen of all times..."
"What is it, anyway?" Twilight said, the concern evident in her voice. "Pests, or something like that?"
"If only. That'd actually be easier to deal with." Applejack shook her head. "Nah, Ah'm all wound up 'cos some no-good snake slipped some Poison Joke into one of our cider barrels right before we were done countin' 'em!"
"They did?" Twilight gasped. She was all too familiar with the effects of the flower that grew inside the Everfree Forest, with that plant having once caused her horn to flop over like a limp, wet towel several years ago. "But Poison Joke extract is said to be odourless, AND tasteless, and it acts within forty-five minutes of contact..."
"Don't Ah know it," Applejack sighed. "And we don't know which one it is, so as y'all can see, that leaves us in a bit of a bind. We'd be putting out that cider and some of the guests could end up with all sorts'a awful headaches."
"Geez, who would even do something like that?" Starlight wondered.
"Dunno. Some joker who's trying to shoehorn in a mystery to solve for attention at the most dramatic or convenient moment. Or a friendship lesson in the makin'. We get those. A lot."
"How many barrels of cider DO you have?" Twilight asked.
"Two thousand."
"Two thou-" Both Twilight and Starlight's eyes boggled at the thought. "Okay, you don't have that many working there and Sweet Apple Acres isn't THAT big! How did you even-?"
"Family from all over had leftovers they didn't shift," Applejack replied. "So they figured Ah should have 'em. We know how much Ponyville loves the stuff. Especially Rainbow, Ah swear she'd replace all the water for clouds with cider if anypony let her."
Twilight was dumbfounded. "So...you have two thousand kegs of cider, one of which was laced with Poison joke extract, and you don't know which one. That's the gist of it." She shook her head. "Well, you can't risk the customers waking up with a horrible condition, I'm pretty sure Zecora can't supply cures for THAT many ponies. You'll just have to dispose of it as waste."
"Twi, Ah can't just throw out ALL the cider we have!" protested Applejack. "Do ya realise how much of a loss we'd make? We'd struggle to get back on our hooves in time for next year!"
"Well, what else is there!?" Twilight shot back. "You can't just serve all this knowing it's tainted!"
"Or..." Starlight mused out loud, "...we just get some guinea pigs to test each batch before you open for Cider Season."
Twilight and Applejack both glared at Starlight. Twilight was eyeing up the unicorn with a look that would surely have reduced her to a fine, burnable, explosive power if looks could rob lives. Applejack's glare was less intense, which Starlight attributed to the thought of less of a financial burn in the pocket, but it was still as angry as a business-pony could manage while still seeming sincere.
Starlight threw up her hooves. "It'll be for the greater good!"
"Starlight, that is utterly horrible!" Twilight shrieked.
"More horrible than Sweet Apple Acres taking a massive financial hit and leaving all those unhappy patrons high and dry?" Starlight replied, raising an eyebrow. "And yes, the 'high and dry' bit was intentional, thanks."
"You're still proposing throwing victims to the timberwolves!"
"Yeah, but at least they'd KNOW about it," pointed out Starlight. "And we'll compensate them afterwards!"
"Who's this 'we'?"
"Well by that, I mean you two, since, you know, you have money. Well, so do I, but I don't exactly have a JOB job..."
"Starlight..." growled Twilight.
"Not that it ain't sort of a kick to the teeth to these ponies," said Applejack with a great degree of skepticism, "but who are you gonna get to go through all two thousand barrels AND have their dignity robbed until Zecora can patch 'em up?"
"Not that many, if I've got this right," smirked Starlight. "Sit tight, I'll be back!" And she promptly galloped away.
"Should Ah be worried?" Applejack asked Twilight, as they watched Starlight melt into the distance.
"Probably," was the nervous reply.
"And how many ponies are we goin' to have to apologise to by tomorrow? She DOES intend to keep the casualties as low as possible, right?"
"Hopefully," Twilight sighed.
Stats
Page generated in 0.264 seconds
Total duration
954 users online
286,630 hits today, 2,314,256 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Ah, always good to see a puzzle fic now and again
Ok let me think
with a similar puzzle i saw where 3 people had this problem, only time to test all 8 samples once,
person 1 picks A,D,E and G
Person 2 picks B,D,F, and G
And person 3 picks C,E,F and G (with the eighth vile H remains untouched)
If its A, only person 1 feels it
If its E, person 1 and 3 feel it
If its G, all 3 people feel it
And if its H, nobody feels it
Therefore it takes 3 ponies to test 8 barrels, but we have 2 000
Simple math says 2 people can guess between 4 choices, and 4 people can do 16
So for every X-ponies, we can test 2 to the power of X barrels
2^11=2048 so we need minimum 11 ponies to try, 8 if AJ starlight and twilight join
Side note:
if im right, and you do let these 3 ponies test, we can use spike, the others of the main 6, Maud, trixie and then one more pony, BUT dont use any of the CMC, they technically are too young to drink acohal(im assuming thats what you're implying with how RD respondes to it)
Together we can solve the puzzle.
These aren't puzzles, this is a fucking math problem.
TEST MY KNOWLEDGE OF MLP TRIVIA!
One. Get Rainbow to do it.
9181603
actually, that can constitute a puzzle, ever played a Professor Layton game?
9181527
that wont work, it only narrows it down to four barrels within the one hour time limit. u wouldnt have time to futher test those four barrels to locate the exact tainted barrel since it takes 45 min to take effect, that leaves only 15 min for a second round of testing and that isnt enough time...
9182071
How is that not enough?
1 pony to test barrels 1-11
2 ponies in every combination can test barrels 12-122
So on and so forth so that if we know who takes the effects of the poison joke, we use the barrel that only EXACTLY those ponies drank(or nobody if its the last not drunken barrel) then we have it?
2^11 is 2048
You need 11
\lceil \log_{2}(2000) \rceil, which is information-theoretical lower bound and reachable (modulo the fact that each pony has to sample up to 1024 barrelsFor the Greater Good.
...
The Greater Good indeed...
Oh, not literal guinea pigs? This could actually work, though. If you don't mind, you could turn it into a "dare" of sorts: Pay a little money and you get to take a sip of any barrel you like, but be careful, there's a drugged barrel somewhere in there.
Just be honest and have them sign a waiver.
Could work, but would be ongoing past an hour:
1 rainbow dash tester. Give her a small cup from a barrel to drink, set the barrel aside to start a line, 5 minutes later do the same with the next barrel and set that one at the back of the new line, continue this pattern until 1999th barrel. Use only barrels that have waited in line for about 50 minutes (10th barrel from the back, soon to be 11th since rainbow is about to test the next barrel). When the effects manifest, the ninth barrel from the back at that moment should be the one to blame. This allows for AJ to dispense cider at a rate of 1 barrel every 5 minutes with 10 minutes of leaway to help absorb rushes. This allows for about 12 barrels every hour she stays open. If they want to condense this and shorten their 5 minute grace period to 1 minute they can obviously dispense 60 barrels an hour but then they have to pay really close attention to their tester to make sure their effects are noticed before a barrel gets deemed safe when it isn't.
Unrealistic organizational nightmare literally within an hour... You mad ponies.
You'd have to figure out some algorithmic batch testing where you have all the barrels tested at once in batches and then retest the barrels in batches where none of the barrels are in the same batch with a barrel they were in a batch with before. 2000 barrels/15 minutes of time where the test results come in every minute on the minute. That gets us a single run of 15 batches per pony per run while i don't have the time to do the actual math rn, I can tell you it would be over 100 ponies per run if we only did two runs meaning over 200+ ponies drinking 15 batch tests of 15 barrel batches each... Might be able to finagle less total ponies if I do more barrels per batch but considering that each each run has to be concurrent for the test results to show up within the hour, that means more runs to make sure each barrel is in a combination of batches completely unique to itself so that the barrel can be singled out once the affected batches are cross examined. Each run will probably need the same amount of ponies per run so the total number of ponies will be ((# of batches used)-1) * (# of runs used) as each run can have a single batch where no pony tests itamd if no one is affected then that batch is assumed tainted.
Might do the actual math on that last one later, gtg though..
It took me some time, but here is my reasoning.
The most minimal of minimums would be one guinea pig, but how much time would it take it to test each? 3/4 hour * 2000 barrels = 1500 hours of testing. OK, let's take 1500 g. pigs, and within 3/4 hour we'll have tested 1500 barrels. 500 more to go, only 1/4 hour left... OK, let us take a 500 more g. pigs. We wouldn't still be on time... Well then, let us have the 500 g. pigs taste the 500 barrels just 3/4 hour before the time is up. Total: 2000 g. pigs.
Now wait. Why can't we take only 1000 g. pigs? Let them taste the first 1000 barrels, then after 1/4 hour taste the second 1000. After all, why does it matter? They taste it at different times.
Now, the 1000 g. pigs need two takes on 2000 barrels in 1/4 hour, so that they are on time for the effects to show up. 500 g. pigs would need four takes on the same amount of barrels in the same time. 5 g. pigs -- 400 takes, 2 -- 800, and 1 would need only 2000 takes, one take a barrel. Therefore...
One guinea pig should suffice: 1/4 hour is divided by 2000 sips from each barrel, so the guinea pig should take a sip from each barrel each 0,45 s! However unlikely this number seems, after the g. pig has taken the sips, the ponies should wait for half an hour, and then start off a stopwatch. When and if the g. pig "dies", the stopwatch is stopped. The time it shows should be divided by 0,45 to get the poisoned barrel's number (assuming, the g. pig took sips in a specific order). Voilà!
Now comes reality: 0,45 s is not sufficient to take sips, it is simply too fast! So the real answer should be 2-3 guinea pigs, dependent on how fast they can be.
Actually, my previous comment in consideration, one guinea pig is expected to take sips at least each 2,25 s (a more plausible speed), so the real number may be 5 guinea pigs.
Zero. Have Moondancer or some other pre-alicorn Twilight level unicorn on standby with Starswirl's time travel spell (the original), and have each barrel tested by a pony with the assurance that at the first showing of symptoms the unicorn will go back with the knowledge of which barrel is tainted. Once the spell wears off, the use of the information should, according to Equestria's non-existent laws of time as seen in The Cutie ReMark, result in the nullification of the poison joke by erasing the past action of testing the cider.
You need about 11 ponies, each marked 1 to 11. For this to work, you need to do the binary system. Like so:
1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
y n y n y n y n y n y
The ones that get the joke after 45 minutes of drinking are the final zeroes, and thus you'll be notified which one is the poisoned one.
1
Pinkie Pie
Additional significant factors: Apple Bloom is helping out with cider season with the family, and will helpfully be moving barrels into position to sell during the testing process. Marking the barrels is vital, as it'll give you ten minutes before factors conspire to make her start helpfully fixing the markings. Also, Poison Joke extract wouldn't be very good at its job of confounding rational expectations if it couldn't spontaneously move from one barrel to another after somepony manages to drink some of it, and we know that while it might take effect in under an hour, it can also take a good part of a day to generate symptoms and the symptoms might not be noticed as soon as they turn up. Also, there's a high probability some of the extract has already taken effect - on the apple trees the cider it's in came from - and is no longer interested in affecting ponies, and extract likely clumps to maximize its effect instead of evenly mixing with a barrel's cider. From all of this, I'd conclude attempting to mix multiple samples into the same drink shouldn't going to yield repeatable, consistent results the way it would if this was dye or most other substances. In fact, the odds of getting the right answer with a volunteer for every individual barrel are only so-so, and only that good because the volunteer will probably be a pony who was supposed to get the poison joke to start with.
My advice would be to forget about trying to find the extract and focus on the consequences. Warn ponies it might be there and to buy all their cider in a single batch instead of going through the line multiple times, and you should minimize the number of victims and more so the time it takes to have a cure ready for them. You're storing the cider in barrels, and all your costs are pretty much sunk down by now. You can afford to sell it more slowly over a longer period of time. (Or you can't, because the process is a bit weird economically to start with, but that's a different problem.)
Also, check to see if Rainbow Dash has a supply of the cure laid in. After all, the fewer ponies are in line buying cider, the more for her. And finding the culprit and getting the denouncement or friendship lesson or whatever over with is actually the fastest way to make the problem magically disappear.