"Seems easy enough," said Grigsby, running the chalk along the squares. "Look! that does it."
"Yes," said the Professor: "Romeo has got there, it is true, and visited every square once, and only once; but you have made him turn nineteen times, and that is not doing the trick in the fewest turns possible."
Hawkhurst, curiously enough, hit on the solution at once, and the Professor remarked that this was just one of those puzzles that a person might solve at a glance or not master in six months.
[71].—Romeo's Second Journey.
"It was a sheer stroke of luck on your part, Hawkhurst," he added. "Here is a much easier puzzle, because it is capable of more systematic analysis; yet it may just happen that you will not do it in an hour. Put Romeo on a white square and make him crawl into every other white square once with the fewest possible turnings. This time a white square may be visited twice, but the snail must never pass a second time through the same corner of a square nor ever enter the black squares."
"May he leave the board for refreshments?" asked Grigsby.
"No; he is not allowed out until he has performed his feat."