Gnome is bugged, once he moves to a tile he removes your mark.
So if you cover whole map with ? for example, as soon as you find the gnome once you'll be know where he moves because the mark will disappear.
I’m not savvy enough to make some kind of 10-minute playthrough GIF, but I don’t think that 10 minutes will seem outlandish to anyone who has been playing a couple games a day since Dragonsweeper launched. I’m definitely making more fatal blunders since the update because I have some muscle memory that is no longer helpful, but among games I win, my average is probably about 9:50.
Dunno what to tell you, but I can say that after dinner tonight I respawned the board until I had the Gnome in sight, and I went ahead and spent two minutes covering the rest of board in question marks (the cleared diamond saves the ½ minute) and my takeaway is…
chasing the Gnome is fun!
It’s dumb and silly and awesome. No idea if I will ever do it again, but it’s a lark and I think you for sharing the idea.