No, it doesn't give you a distance-to-player for every square on the board. It is closer to giving you an ordered list of 'most recent player positions' - notab

No, it doesn't give you a distance-to-player for every square on the board. It is closer to giving you an ordered list of 'most recent player positions' - notably, the point directly in front of the player is not necessarily in this list. These positions contain "time since player was here," which is not a distance to player. (It could be thought of as a maximum bound on distance-to-player, I suppose). If the player's route is not straight, some squares with "fresher scent" may be physically more distant from the player than squares with less fresh scent.