On a blog like Grey Matters, with its focus on mental feats, it's not unreasonable to expect occasional discussion of the Knight's Tour.

What is unusual, however, is when something esoteric like the Knight's Tour becomes newsworthy! In this New York Times article, there is a discussion of two performers, Eric Walton and Ricky Jay, both of whom do the Knight's Tour in their act. While there are differences, the emphasis on esoteric history in both presentations is the source of the controversy.

An edited version of the same article is also available thanks to the Dallas Morning News.

Interestingly, both magicians are battling over the classic memorized version, which is not the only approach. In the Grey Matters Mental Gym, for example, I teach an algorithmic approach to the Knight's Tour that lets both the first and last squares be chosen. This version is so little known that even such learned people such as Professor Arthur Benjamin have written me to say that they have previously been unaware of this approach.

If you're interested in actually seeing the Knight's Tour, you can see video performances of it by Xaver Neuhausler and Gerry McCambridge over at Grey Matters Videos.