  Two systems whose correlations cannot be classically accounted for display
the simplest instance of quantum entanglement. Although this two-party
association has caused a revolution in the foundations and uses of quantum
mechanics, genuine entanglement among several parties unveils a whole new class
of phenomena and applications. In this work we suggest a way to prepare Dicke
states from a tunable source of bipartite entanglement to investigate
foundational issues. The scheme has the following distinctive features: (i) it
relies on controlled information loss and {\it unentangled} measurements; (ii)
irrespective of the source entanglement, whenever a Dicke state is produced, it
is ideal; (iii) the optimal entanglement of the bipartite source undergoes a
second-order-like transition depending on the parameters of the Dicke state to
be produced. These properties lead to asymptotic results on the entanglement
between any qubit belonging to a Dicke state and the remaining qubits.
