Land and Water

^{Math Puzzles of the Month}
Land and Water

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

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?

After you've tried this for yourself, check our solution.