Click the board to let the system randomly drop 8 cities represented by glass pearls.
Click a city to start from. From then on click a position which is connected to the previous one by a stright line in one of the eight primary directions.

The counter on the right board shows you how far you have travelled.
Try to find the shortest path which connects all cities.
The visited cities will turn purple.

Variants 1 - 10: These variants have 10, 20, 30,..., 100 random cities on the 50x50 board.
Variants 11 - 21: These variants have 10, 20, 30,..., 100 random cities on the 25x25 board.
Change the piece set to get larger tokens for these variants! Variant 22 : here you can create your own setup before you try to find the shortest connecting path.
When you have placed your cities, simply click a city to start your path. Variant 23 : like variant 11, but on 25x25 board (change the piece set to get larger tokens).
Variants 24 - 33: Fixed setups (all an 50x50 board). In the fixed variants the length of the shortest path is given. You win when you can find a path with this length connecting all cities. You may even be able to improve on the given shortest length. Solutions are attached (choose menu option Help/ShowSoluton). Some solutions may take a while to load.
Variant 34 etc : curiosities; see associated game text for details.

Please note that there are several alternative pieces sets.

 
The game Shortcut is closely related to the famous 'traveling salesman problem' of finding the shortest route between a number of cities. It is one of the hardest problems in mathematics.
Here, in the 8-directions-geometry, the problem is similar, but also subtly different. Some fundamental questions might have different answers, eg:
Can the shortest path ever cross itself?
Can the shortest path ever visit a position twice, and if yes, can that always be avoided by changing the path slightly?