A farmer builds a square pen for sheep. He wants to double the area of the pen by extending two adjacent sides by the exact same length. If the original pen had a side length of 10 meters, how many meters must he add to those two sides?
10 * (sqrt(2) - 1) meters (or approximately 4.14 meters)
Original area = 10 * 10 = 100. New area = 200. New side length = sqrt(200) = 10 * sqrt(2). Since the original side was 10, the added length is 10 * sqrt(2) - 10 = 10(sqrt(2) - 1).
About this riddle
Logic riddles give you a few facts and ask what must be true. List what you know, cross out what cannot be, and see what is left.
Difficulty: Hard. More like this: Logic riddles with answers or try Einstein's Logic Grid for a different kind of puzzle.
More logic riddles
A snail starts climbing up a slick 20-foot vertical wall. Every single day, the snail climbs up 4 feet, but every single night while sleeping, it slips back 3 feet. On which exact day will the snail first reach the top of the wall?
A line goes: sparkler, picnic basket, sparkler, picnic basket, sparkler. What comes next?
Four books are stacked on a shelf. The red book is directly on top of the blue book. The green book is somewhere beneath the yellow book. The blue book is somewhere above the green book. Which book is at the very bottom of the stack?
Three boxes are painted Red, Green, and Blue. Inside one box is a gold coin; the other two are empty. The Red box says: 'The coin is not in the Green box.' The Green box says: 'The coin is in this box.' The Blue box says: 'The coin is not in this box.' If exactly one statement is true, which box contains the gold coin?
A lily pad doubles in size every day. On the 30th day, the lily pad covers the entire pond. On what day did it cover exactly half of the pond?
A farmer needs to cross a river with a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage. His boat can only carry himself and one item at a time. However, if left unattended, the wolf will eat the goat, and the goat will eat the cabbage. What is the minimum number of one-way trips the farmer must make to get everything across safely?

