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Land and Water

This puzzle was suggested by a similar one on the Aims Education Foundation  [1]Web site.

Farm diagram

An elderly farmer in Seedonia decided to pass his farm on to his four children by dividing the land up equally among them. But land itself is not worth anything, since a farmer needs water to make the land productive. There were eight wells on the farm. Here is a map of the land.

The blue circles are the wells.

The problem was how to divide the farm so that the four new farms had equal amounts of land and each had two of the eight wells. How could the farmer have done it?


This content has been re-published with permission from SEED. Copyright © 2025 Schlumberger Excellence in Education Development (SEED), Inc.

Course: 

  • Math [2]
  • Geometry [3]
Result/Solution(s)

Here are two ways we found to solve the problem. Each results in four equal parcels of land. Each parcel has two wells.

Solution 1 Solution 1

Can you find any other ways to fairly divide up that land and water?

  • Math Puzzle [4]
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Links
[1] http://blog.aimsedu.org/category/puzzle/
[2] https://hootsgo.org/?q=taxonomy/term/50
[3] https://hootsgo.org/?q=taxonomy/term/62
[4] https://hootsgo.org/?q=tags/math-puzzle