It took me a long while to reach the goal, but once I found the route, optimization wasn't difficult. Really unique puzzle. Definitely one of my favorites now.
Really amazing structure. I got caught in a certain way of thinking since I was focused on how the solution had to be exponential (was stuck in the 1200+ step range), but eventually I saw a faster setup. Ended up taking me twice as long to optimize as it did to reach the exit. Congrats on porting this to Pathology!
