So I've invented a new game, or should I say "game." The discovery happen'd upon me spontaneously during a walk through town with my brother. I started to take a shortcut and told him to follow with the explanation straight from Euclid that "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line."

You see, conventional urban walking is often grossly inefficient due to its incessant tendency to make use of rectangular/right-angle type routes.

So, the game is basically to try and walk to your destination in the straightest line possible. You might be surprised at how "odd" the routes you take when you do this are.

What you need to have to be good at this are: visuo-spatial thinking/perception, knowledge of the locale's geography and general intuition.

Some tips and things to look out for:

Cars: it may be tempting to cut a huge diagonal across a not-so-busy street, but watch out, a car may appear out of nowhere and force you to either cut a huge horizontal to the other side or just plough on diagonally and make the car avoid/stop for you.

Wooded areas, streams, rivers, fences, etc. I won some serious ground due to my brother forgetting about some of these. He got greedy and tried to cut a huge diagonal, found there was too much water in a stream and had to do an intense reverse-horizontal.

Anyhow, the game may sound strange-- but I swear it's really fun. Next time you're on a walk with someone, give it a try!