Impossible Puzzle?
 

I've been trying to figure out if this puzzle is possible or not. I think I've seen it before and I also think that it may be impossible. Am I right, or is there some bizarre trick to it?

Puzzle can be found here.

You know I have proper right to be infuriated with this post?





I'm addicted

I've officially become unproductive.

Well here is your solution. Don't look until you are ready, you can't unlearn this knowledge.

Spoiler: It's proven impossible here: http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.3utilities.html
The short explanation is that it cannot be done in 2 dimensions.

Hahaha.

Damn logarithims...

Well you just made me piss my girlfriend off because I was supposed to be giving her directions and instead I was on the phone trying to solve that stupid thing. Thanks for nothing. lol

Has to be impossible.

Wow. That was nice. Do you have more puzzles like this?

Nah, I just stumbled upon that one randomly. I'm sure there are more out there somewhere, but I don't have any direct links.

It should be impossible - and I think I can prove it. (Of course, this is where someone will put up their hand and say they have a solution to the problem! :D)

Hard to stop trying. Much harder to solve. Seems impossible with my limited brainpower.

i heard from a friend that his university teacher had the solution to this. I think he was trying to pull a joke on me but still, id like to know ...

Your friend's university teacher doesn't have a solution. This puzzle IS impossible. I have come up with a proof. PM me if you want the proof. (I assume people don't want it posted here, to avoid spoiling their fun. :D )

What kind of person goes through all the trouble to code that and put it up on the web if it is impossible. A sadist? Communist spy who wants to ruin productivity?

It has nothing to do with brain power, it's just similar to the river+bridge problem one great matematician discoveres (i dont remember his name).
I learnt about these things when i has a computer sciences project.
It's just simple maths, using combinations.

meaning you solved it?

And learned man, learned, not learnt

Ya, not solvable, can get all the lines but one. It will always cut it off.

I remember a kid presented to this to our class in 5th grade and said there was a 3 million dollar prize offered in a magazine. We all spent the rest of the day trying to draw it up.

How about the second one? It's easy until the last move, and then it seems impossible. I haven't been playing with it for very long, though.

Actually, you can beat it by cheating:

this thing is driving me nuts

the three houses and three utilities puzzle has a "cheat that will only work if completed on a sheet of paper - take the final line around the back of the sheet of paper.

But then that becomes three dimensional, not two, thus only proving that the puzzle is impossible.