i probably could've gotten a better score but i was paying attention to something else and forgot that i had to repeat the eighth/ninth square's position in the center one more time from #9 to #8;; i remember the exact pattern in my head primarily because i was drawing larger contiguous imaginary shapes with them... i had three main shapes in mind:
the test pattern from start to finish (left-to-right, top-to-bottom, from 1 to 9) was the following...
[4] + 2 + 3 + 5 + 4 + 5 + 9 + [5] (in reverse: a curvy slider that starts at "5" then sharply cuts a crescent-moon vertex from "9" and traces through "5" over to "4", creating another vertex point from which you draw a rounded rhombus through the remaining 5-3-2-4 sequence)
then
[5] + 8 + 6 + 3 + 9 + 2 + [5] (in reverse: think of it like you're playing snake, travelling up from 5 and cutting diagonally to jump the screen-border from 2 to 9, then jumping the screen again into 3 and 6 before cutting diagonally to 8, then connect your snake at 5 again)
then
[2] + 8 + 1 + 9 + 2 + [1] (in reverse: think of it as though "1" is the end of a slider leading into a sequence of a rotating pair of back-and-forth jumps that end at "2")
but when i play it in reverse (view the parentheses from the bottom of this shape-sequence, then retrace it toward the top), i forgot to trace the final shape at "5" and skipped from that position at square #9 to square #7 at "9"