Update: knights tour completed!
I've wondered if this could have an application to orienteering. A knight's tour score-o might consist of 64 controls (one placed within each square of an 8x8 grid). To score points, controls would have to be visited in a sequence compliant to a knight's movement. Here's an online game for illustration.
Hopefully someone more adept at math can find a quick and convenient way to tally scores. In the meantime, here's this UsynligO course within 1.5 km^2 at Cane Creek Mountains Natural Area that visits 64 virtual controls in the sequence of the earliest knight's tour.
These are a lot of controls crammed into a relatively small area. The resulting course length is impressive and promising to people drawn to longer events such as myself. Due to control density and risk of unintentional punches, it's currently unadvisable to run this as a score course.
One possible solution to this would be to incorporate a "punch" button to apps such as UsynligO or MapRun. With this feature, when the runner reaches a control, s/he must push a button on the phone to activate the punch versus having an automatic and possibly unintentional punch.
Trond, creator of UsynligO, likes this idea and may apply it to a future version of the app. In the meantime, his suggested work around is to give the app access to GPS only when used. That way it will not receive location when the phone screen saver is on, helping to avoid this issue.
My family went camping at Cane Creek Mountains Natural Area this past weekend and I got up early Sunday, 6/22 to give the Knight's Tour a shot. I used MapRun ("Checksites" function) for this attempt as I wanted to get some experience with the app prior to next month's Tour de NavX.
I drastically underestimated the distance and duration of this challenge! My incomplete route (42/64 controls) is almost 25 km. Granted, this is inflated by significant "noise" in the SW quadrant. It took me over 4 hours, which was my time limit to keep my family from waiting too long.
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| 42 out of 64 controls visited |
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| June 22 attempt: Livelox 15.5 miles, 2100' climb, 4:24 |
Some notes on MapRun: the app treated this as a score course resulting in unintentional punching. Thankfully it still beeped at revisited controls. It stopped working multiple times while I was on the course. Hopefully changing permissions fixes this for future use.
Some notes on the map: I need to update it to make it greener, add new features to the west, add boulders, enlarge existing rocks, potentially remove inaccuracies (i.e. #44 cairn), replace several man-made features with tower (deer stand) symbols. Lots of work! It's still usable.
Lastly, some notes on the knight's tour: this format can bring rogaine-length courses to smaller venues, which is exciting. I want to come back and try it again! I think I could clear it in 6 hours. CCMNA continues to impress me as a challenging venue with a great view.
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| Sunset from Monadnock Lookout Tower (note mountains in distance) |
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