Twelve bugs – two of six different species – want to find their respective mates. Your job is to connect A to a, B to b, …, and so forth using an unbroken path between each bug pair. Your lines must travel through the center of each square in the array, and you can only travel up, down, left and right (not diagonally).

Because the bugs leave behind poison trails, no path can cross another, and no path can cross itself. When you are finished, every square must have been traversed once and only once.

 _ _ _ _ _ _ _
|A|_|B|_|_|_|C|
|_|_|_|_|d|_|_|
|_|_|D|_|_|_|_|
|_|_|_|E|_|_|e|
|_|_|_|F|_|_|_|
|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
|a|_|_|_|b|c|_|
|f|_|_|_|_|_|_|

Prove whether or not there is a solution.

If you think there is a bug in the problem, can you move EXACTLY one bug EXACTLY one square from its original position (not diagonally) and find a solution? Would it be unique?

The bulk of this problem was created by Clifford Pickover

(In reply to Solution by Jonathan Chang)

If you move the bug 'd' over to the right in 1 position, it will be solvable. In my point of viwe, it is unique due to the fact that 'B' and 'C' may not cross through "E-e", thus, forcing them to have to go around. They only way 'C' can get around is by passing by 'B' and 'D'.

Bruno.

Posted by Bruno on 2005-04-29 05:38:53