Henry Ernest Dudeney/Puzzles and Curious Problems/331 - The Siamese Serpent/Solution
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Puzzles and Curious Problems by Henry Ernest Dudeney: $331$
- The Siamese Serpent
- Draw as much of the serpent as possible using one continuous line,
- without taking the pencil off the paper or going over the same line twice.
Solution
- The drawing cannot be executed under the conditions in fewer than $13$ lines.
- The longest of these lines is one which starts at $A$ and ends at $B$ in the diagram.
- The dotted lines are the ones which have been omitted.
- Thus, the unbroken line from $D$ to $C$ is longer than the broken one, so we take the former.
- Again, we get a little more of the drawing by taking the tongue rather than the mouth,
- but the part of the tongue ending in a single line has to be omitted.
Sources
- 1932: Henry Ernest Dudeney: Puzzles and Curious Problems ... (previous) ... (next): Solutions: $331$. -- The Siamese Serpent
- 1968: Henry Ernest Dudeney: 536 Puzzles & Curious Problems ... (previous) ... (next): Answers: $431$. The Siamese Serpent