A patrol starts at point A and moves north 2 blocks and then east 3 blocks. Using Manhattan distance, how many blocks away from A is the final point?

• A. 3
• B. 4
• C. 5
• D. 6

Answer: (C)

Manhattan distance measures how far you are when you can only move along grid streets, so you add the vertical and horizontal moves. You go 2 blocks north and 3 blocks east, so the total distance is 2 + 3 = 5 blocks. Therefore, the final point is 5 blocks away from the start. This avoids diagonal shortcuts and reflects the rule of counting every block you actually traverse. The other numbers come from misunderstanding: they’d correspond to taking only one leg or a different notion of distance, not the grid-based sum.