Thanks to Arunima and Amol again for contributing a wonderful puzzle. This is a famous puzzle called the Heron’s Shortest Distance Problem and has historical roots. The puzzle can be solved through calculus, but can be solved without any calculus as well, and that is the attempt taken here.

There were three correct answers to the puzzle – Karan Sharma, my nephew form Jaipur, Abhinav Jain (last week’s prize puzzle winner) and Suman Saraf, who has been sending the right answers to just about every puzzle – thank you all and well done!

I have attached the solution through a video this time to explain the answer:

More interested readers can also look up a more in depth treatment on the following link that was originally shared by Arunima.

http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/convergence/historical-activities-for-calculus-module-3-optimization-herons-shortest-distance-problem

Hope you enjoyed this puzzle!