Counting the Number of Squares Reachable in k Knight’s Moves

Copyright © 2013 Amanda M. Miller, David L. Farnsworth. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Using geometric techniques, formulas for the number of squares that require k moves in order to be reached by a sole knight from its initial position on an infinite chessboard are derived. The number of squares reachable in exactly k moves are 1, 8, 32, 68, and 96 for k = 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively, and 28k – 20 for k ≥ 5. The cumulative number of squares reach-able in k or fever moves are 1, 9, 41, and 109 for k = 0, 1, 2, and 3, respectively, and 14k2 – 6k + 5 for k ≥ 4. Although these formulas are known, the proofs that are presented are new and more mathematically accessible then preceding proofs