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Gardener's Woe (Posted on 2006-06-24) Difficulty: 4 of 5
An unlucky gardener planted a 10x10 square array of 100 old seeds out in the garden. Only 5 of these seeds have germinated including one at the southwest corner (0,0) where a slug is currently reducing it to ground level.

When it finishes it will head directly to the next closest doomed plant. After it eats that one it will again leave a slime trail to the closest remaining plant and so on until the garden is no more.

Where are the 4 remaining seedlings if the path crawled by the slug is the longest possible and it never has to choose between two equidistant snacks?

Note: Although the slug will never have to choose between two equidistant seedlings, this doesn't imply that no two are equidistant.

Next find the locations if 6 seedlings had germinated instead of 5.

See The Solution Submitted by Jer    
Rating: 4.0000 (1 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
Solution re(2): computer solution to 6 | Comment 22 of 27 |
(In reply to re: computer solution to 6 by Dej Mar)

These are the four solutions for the 6-seedling problem that are longer than 36.5 (you can also flip these around the major diagonal as well):

 0  0     7  4     5  7     9  8     9  0     0  9     36.51883671073806
 0  0     6  5     5  9     9  8     9  0     0  9     36.78438298849983
 0  0     6  5     5  9     9  9     9  0     0  8     36.97494988031661
 0  0     6  5     5  9     9  9     0  9     8  0     36.97494988031661

Edited on June 26, 2006, 9:51 am
  Posted by Charlie on 2006-06-26 09:48:59

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