How do you get a cork out of a wine bottle without a corkscrew?

real-life/cork New

New entry, edited from material collected for the archive and not yet in a released version.

Problem

How do you get a cork out of a wine bottle without a corkscrew?

It is possible to remove the cork without breaking the bottle or the
cork, and drink the wine afterwards.

-- Nick Leaton

Show solution

Soak a piece of wool string in a flammable liquid.  Tie it tight around
the bottle neck.  Fire it.  Dip the bottle neck in cold salty water
(-16 degrees centigrade), the sudden temperature change will break the
bottle neck without disturbing the wine.  Drink the wine.  (And if you
still care about the cork, break the bottle neck into pieces.)

-- Jon Haugsand <jonhaug@ifi.uio.no>

Picnic solution:

If you tap the bottle against a tree for a few minutes, the cork will
come out enough so that it can be pulled out the rest of the way.  I am
not sure exactly why this works.  And it doesn't *always* work, either.
And I wouldn't do it with a really old bottle of wine :-)

-- Jamie Dreier <pl436000@brownvm.brown.edu>

I haven't tried this, but I've heard it does work.  Push the cork into
the bottle first.  Take a strong thin plastic binding strap.  Push a
loop of this inside the bottle and around the cork, and pull it out.
It may be easier to take a little wine out first.

-- Jaap Scherphuis <jaap@ermine.ox.ac.uk>