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On a doubly-infinite chessboard, number all the cells in a counterclockwise spiral starting at a central cell labeled 0. Start with a knight at cell 0, and thereafter always move the knight to the smallest unvisited cell. Sequence gives succession of squares visited.

Sequence ends if knight is unable to move.

Inspired by A316588 and, like that sequence, has only finitely many terms; see A316667 for details.

See A326924 for a variant where the knight prefers squares closest to the origin, and gets trapped only after 22325 moves. - M. F. Hasler, Oct 21 2019

See A323809 for an infinite extension of this sequence, obtained by allowing the knight to go back in case it was trapped. See A328908 for a variant of length > 10^6, using the taxicab distance, and A328909 for a variant using the sup norm. - M. F. Hasler, Nov 04 2019

This sequence uses the squared distance from the origin to label the squares. At each step the knight goes to an unvisited square with the smallest label; if there are two or more squares with the same label it then chooses the square with the smallest number if the board was numbered as a spiral, i.e., the smallest spiral numbered square as in A316667.

The sequence is finite. After 22325 steps a square with label 6885 (spiral number = 25984) is visited, after which all neighboring squares have been visited.

If one looks at the spiral number for the visited squares in this sequence one finds it is the same as A316667 for the first 34 steps. On the 35th step this sequence goes to a square with spiral number 77, which is 4 units from the origin, while A316667 goes to square 43, which is sqrt(18) (> 4) units from the origin.

Sequence A326924 gives the number of the square visited at the n-th move, which is at distance^2 a(n) from the origin, cf. formula. - M. F. Hasler, Oct 22 2019

"Closest to the origin" is meant in the sense of Euclidean distance, and in case of a tie, the square coming earliest on the spiral.

Differs from the original A316328 from a(34) = 76 on. See there for more information and other related sequences.

The knight gets trapped at the 22325th move at position (x,y) = (81, -18), from which it can't reach any unvisited square.

Sequence A326922 gives the distance^2 of the square number a(n) visited at move n. - M. F. Hasler, Oct 22 2019

From M. F. Hasler, Nov 04 2019: (Start)

When a(22325) = 25983 at (81, -18) is reached, at distance sqrt(6885) from the origin, the last unvisited square has number 13924, at (-59, 59), distance sqrt(6962) from the origin. This suggests that in an infinite extension (knight moves one step back if no unvisited square is available, cf. A323809) the knight might eventually visit every square. Can this be disproved by a counterexample of a square which will never be visited in the infinite extension? (In A328908 such a counterexample exists even before the knight gets stuck.)

The ratio a(n)/n oscillates between 0.5 and less than 1.7 for all n > 3000, even < 1.5 for all n > 14000, cf. graph of the sequence. What is the superior and inferior limit of this ratio, assuming the infinite extension beyond n = 22325?

(End)

Take the standard counterclockwise square spiral starting at 0, as in A304586, but only write one digit at a time in the cells of the spiral: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,1,0,1,1,1,2,...

Place a chess knight at cell 0. Move it to the lowest-numbered cell it can attack, and if there is a tie, move it to the cell closest (in Euclidean distance) to the start, and if there is still a tie, move to the left(*).

No cell can be visited more than once.

Inspired by the Trapped Knight video and A316667.

Just as for A316667, the sequence is finite. After a while, the knight has no unvisited squares it can reach, and the sequence ends with a(1217) = 4.

(*)Moving to the left means choose the point with the lowest x-coordinate. This leads to an unambiguous choice of tied squares only for the 'move left' case.

This is an infinite extension of A316667 with which it agrees for the first 2016 terms. - N. J. A. Sloane, Jan 28 2019

This is an infinite extension of A316328, with which it coincides for the first 2016 terms. - N. J. A. Sloane, Jan 29 2019

From M. F. Hasler, Nov 04 2019: (Start)

At move 99999, the least yet unvisited square has number 66048, which is near the border of the visited region. This suggests that the knight will eventually visit every square. Can this be proved or disproved through a counterexample?

More formally, let us call "isolated" a set of unvisited squares which is connected through knight moves, but which cannot be extended to a larger such set by adding a further square. Can there exist at some moment a finite isolated set which the knight cannot reach? (Without the last condition, the square a(2016) would clearly satisfy the condition just before the knight reaches it.)

Such subsets have a good chance of preserving this property forever. It should be possible to prove that an isolated subset sufficiently far (2 knight moves?) from any other unvisited square (or from the infinite connected subset of unvisited squares) remains so forever. (This condition of distance could replace the time-dependent condition "reachable by the knight".)

If such (forever) isolated sets do exist, with what frequency will they occur? Could they have a nonzero asymptotic density? Will this (if so, how) depend on the way the knight measures "lowest available" (cf. variants where the taxicab or Euclidean or sup norm distance from the origin is used)? (End)

A variant of Angelini's "Kneil's Knumberphile Knight", inspired by Sloane's "The Trapped Knight", cf. A316328 and links:

Consider an infinite chess board with squares numbered along the infinite square spiral starting with 0 at the origin (as in A174344, A274923 and A296030). The squares are filled with successive digits of the integers: 0, 1, 2, ..., 9, 1, 0, 1, 1, ... (= A007376 starting with 0). The knight moves at each step to the yet unvisited square with the lowest digit on it, and in case of a tie, the one closest to the origin, first by Euclidean distance, then by appearance on the spiral (i.e., number of the square). This sequence lists the number of the square visited in the n-th move, if the knight starts at the origin, viz a(0) = 0.

It turns out that following these rules, the knight gets trapped at the 1070th move, when he can't reach any unvisited square.

See A326918 for the sequence of visited digits, given as A007376(a(n)).

Many squares, e.g., 2: (1,1), 4: (-1,1), 5: (-1,0), 6: (-1,-1), 7: (0,-1), 8: (1,-1), 9: (2,-1), ..., will never be visited, even in the infinite extension of the sequence where the knight can move back if it gets trapped, in order to resume with a new unvisited square, as in A323809. - M. F. Hasler, Nov 08 2019

This is the number of completed steps before being trapped for a knight starting on a square with square spiral number n for a knight with step rules given in A326918. We use the standard square spiral number of A316667 to define the start square, as opposed to its single-digit board value, as it is a unique value for each square on the board.

Unlike board numbering methods which have a unique smallest value at the origin, which causes the knight to immediately move toward it when starting from any other square, the single-digit numbering method has multiple small values distributed over the board. Therefore when starting from an arbitrary square the knight may move in any direction, toward the smallest valued neighboring square one knight leap away. Only when two or more such squares exist with the same number does the origin start to act as the square of attraction. This means some knight paths will meander well away from the origin and can become trapped before ever approaching it.

For starting squares n from 1 to 10^6 the longest path before being trapped is a(435525) = 2865. The smallest path to being trapped is a(42329) = 109. The path which ends on the square with the largest standard square spiral number is a(31223), which ends on square 47863. The first path which ends on the square with the smallest standard spiral number is a(138), which ends on square 4. This square is adjacent to the origin, but it is curious that the three squares with smaller spiral numbers, 1,2,3, do not act as the end square for any of the starting squares studied.

This sequence is finite: after 15767 squares have been visited the square with number 15813 is reached after which all eight neighboring squares the knight could move to have already been visited. See the linked image. The largest visited square is a(15525) = 19363, while numerous smaller numbered squares are never visited, e.g., 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 16, 17, 19, ... .