Three cells with a single turn
Begin SKY at row 3, column 4, move right to the next letter, and then turn upward for the final letter. The complete ordered check is: 1 at row 3, column 4; 2 at row 3, column 5; 3 at row 2, column 5. Reading those cells gives S → K → Y, so the route uses one right move followed by one up move.
The path changes direction once and consists of two straight segments. It spans two rows and two columns, visits an edge twice, and does not enter a board corner. Its first and last cells each have two open orthogonal neighbors on the raw board. Once these three cells are assigned, 17 of the board’s 20 open cells remain for the other words.