In the Eternal Forest, the trees are perfectly circular, each having a diameter of exactly one meter. They are arranged in a flat, infinite rectangular grid. The center of each tree is ten meters away from the centers of each of its closest neighbors.

There are many paths through the Eternal Forest. Each path is infinite in length, constant in width, and perfectly straight. Trees don't grow on the paths, but every path will have tree trunks touching it on either side.

What is the narrowest possible path through the Eternal Forest?

(In reply to re: Thoughts by Jer)

You're right. For some reason I assumed we were only dealing with slopes of 1/n. I might be able to put this into Excel again and find out what the distances are.

Posted by Eric on 2005-05-27 12:56:51