Let a chess piece make a tour on an 
chessboard whose squares
are numbered from 1 to 
along the path of the chess piece. Then the tour is called
a magic tour if the resulting arrangement of numbers is a magic
square, and a semimagic tour if the resulting arrangement of numbers is a semimagic square. If the first and last squares
traversed are connected by a move, the tour is said to be closed (or "re-entrant");
otherwise it is open. (Note some care with terminology is necessary. For example,
Jelliss terms a semimagic tour a "magic tour" and a magic tour a "diagonally
magic tour.")
Magic knight graph tours are not possible on 
boards for 
odd. However, as had long been
known, they are possible for all boards of size 
for 
. However, the 
(
)
remained open even since it was first investigated by authors such as Beverley (1848).
It was not resolved until an exhaustive computer enumeration of all possibilities
was completed on August 5, 2003 (Stertenbrink 2003). This search required an exhaustive
61.40 CPU-days, corresponding to 138.25 days of computation at 1 GHz.
Beverley (1848) composed the 
semimagic knight's tour (left figure). Another semimagic tour for 
with main diagonal sums of 348 and 168 was found by de Jaenisch
(1862; Ball and Coxeter 1987, p. 185; center figure). The "most magic"
knight's tour known on the 
board has main diagonal sums of 264 and 256 and is shown on the right (Francony 1882).
Extensive histories of knight's magic tours are given by Murray (1951) and Jelliss.
In all, there are a total of 140 distinct semimagic knight's tours on the 
board (Stertenbrink 2003).
Combining two half-knights' tours one above the other as in the above figure gives a magic square (Ball and Coxeter 1987, p. 185).
The illustration above shows a closed magic knight graph tour on a 
board (Madachy 1979, p. 88).
A magic tour for king moves is illustrated above (Ball and Coxeter 1987, p. 186).
