Plumbers

A puzzle that involves a technique to discover the people who leak confidential information in a government organization is presented. The director of the organization found that some of his most intimate thoughts were appearing in the newspapers the day after he revealed them to the nine advisers. The director used a common technique for dicovering leakers by telling each suspect some unique piece of information and then seeing if it spreads. The director could find the precise triplet by using far fewer tidbits and sometimes spreads tidbits to more than four people and is willing to tolerate more than two leaks.