A civil engineer that has recently graduated from the Czech Technical University encountered an interesting problem and asked us for a help. The problem is more of economical than engineering nature. The engineer needs to connect several buildings with an infrastructure.
Unfortunately, the investor is not the owner of all the land between these places. Therefore, some properties have to be bought first.
The land is divided into a regular “grid” of hexagonal parcels, each of them forms an independent unit and has the same value. Some of the parcels belong to the investor. These parcels form four connected areas, each containing one building to be connected with the others. Your task is to find the minimal number of parcels that must be acquired to connect the four given areas.
The whole land also has a hexagonal shape with six sides, each consisting of exactly H parcels.
The above picture shows a land with H = 4, parcels with letters represent the four areas to be connected. In this case, it is necessary to buy four additional parcels. One of the possible solutions is marked by crosses.