The evil hunchbacked Sicilian Vizzini has kidnapped the Princess Buttercup, and he holds a knife to her throat. The man in black wants to rescue her, and has challenged Vizzini to a battle of wits. The winner will take custody of the princess, and the loser will die. The man in black takes two goblets of wine, and some deadly iocaine poison. He turns away from Vizzini and puts the poison in one goblet of wine. Vizzini doesn’t know which goblet of wine has been poisoned, and must choose which one to drink from.
Edited extract from “The Princess Bride,” by William Goldman:
"Guess which goblet to drink from?" Vizzini cried. "I don't guess. I think. I consider. Then I decide. But I never guess."
"The battle of wits has begun," said the man in black. "It ends when you decide and we drink the wine and find out who is right and who is dead. We both drink, need I add, and swallow, naturally, at precisely the same time."
"It's all so simple," said Vizzini. "All I have to do is deduce, from what I know of you, the way your mind works. Are you the kind of man who would put the poison into his own glass, or into the glass of his enemy?"
"You're stalling," said the man in black.
"I'm relishing this," answered the Sicilian. "No one has challenged my mind in years and I love it. . . . By the way, may I smell both goblets?"
"Be my guest. Just be sure you put them down the same way you found them."
The Sicilian sniffed his own glass; then he reached across the kerchief for the goblet of the man in black and sniffed that. "As you said, it’s odourless."
"As I also said, you're stalling."
The Sicilian smiled and stared at the wine goblets. "Now a great fool," he began, "would place the wine in his own goblet, because he would know that only another great fool would reach first for what he was given. I am clearly not a great fool, so I can clearly not reach for your wine."
"That's your final choice?"
"No. Because you knew I was not a great fool, so you would know that I would never fall for such a trick. You would count on it. So I can clearly not reach for mine either."
"Keep going," said the man in black.
"I intend to." The Sicilian reflected a moment. "We have now decided the poisoned cup is most likely in front of you.”
The man in black was starting to get nervous. "Truly you have a great intellect," whispered the man in black.
"You have fought and beaten my giant, which means you are exceptionally strong, and exceptionally strong men are convinced that they are too powerful ever to die, too powerful even for iocane poison, so you could have put it in your cup, trusting on your strength to save you; thus I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."
The man in black was very nervous now. "You're just trying to make me give something away with all this chatter," said the man in black angrily. "Well it won't work. You'll learn nothing from me, that I promise you."
"I have already learned everything from you," said the Sicilian. "I know where the poison is."
"Only a genius could have deduced as much. You cannot frighten me," said the man in black, but there was fear all through his voice.
"Shall we drink then?"
"Pick, choose, quit dragging it out, you don't know, you couldn't know."
The Sicilian only smiled at the outburst. Then a strange look crossed his features and he pointed off behind the man in black. "What in the world can that be?" he asked.
The man in black turned around and looked. "I don't see anything."
"Oh, well, I could have sworn I saw something, no matter." The Sicilian began to laugh.
"I don't understand what's so funny," said the man in black.
"Tell you in a minute," said the hunchback. "But first let's drink."
And he picked up his own wine goblet.
The man in black picked up the one in front of him.
They drank.
"You guessed wrong," said the man in black.
"You only think I guessed wrong," said the Sicilian, his laughter ringing louder. "That's what's so funny. I switched glasses when your back was turned."
There was nothing for the man in black to say.
"Fool!" cried the hunchback.
He kept laughing until the iocane powder took effect, and he suddenly died.
The man in black stepped quickly over the corpse, then ripped the blindfold from the Princess's eyes.
"You killed him," she whispered.
"I let him die laughing," said the man in black.
Buttercup rubbed her wrists, stopped, massaged her ankles. She took a final look at the Sicilian. "To think," she murmured, "all that time it was your cup that was poisoned."
"They were both poisoned," said the man in black. "I've spent the past two years building up immunity to iocane powder."
Vocabulary:
to take custody of someone – to take care or control of someone who cannot look after themselves
precisely - exactly
to deduce something–to arrive at a fact or conclusion by reasoning
to stall – to deliberately try to waste time or delay
to relish something – to greatly enjoy something
“Be my guest.” – Go ahead; Certainly
to sniff something – to breathe in loudly and sharply through the nose
to drag something out – to make something last longer than is necessary
a corpse – a dead body
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