Usually I would not point out a typo, but this one makes it difficult to grasp the magnitude of potential improvements:
> the number of nodes A* has to explore decreases from 12693 to 12693
In the event this helps a random developer with some fun experimentation: I had once accidentally independently reinvented drunken pathfinding by adding random additional weights to the node costs, which has the side effect of making an object seeking a path end wander "drunkenly."
It's a little unclear, but it's a live updating number, if you follow the directions, you'll see the second number decrease.