I certainly find the explorer score more interesting in cycling terms. I'd much rather ride to new places than spend my time colouring in the Wet Midlands.
For me what's happened is two fold:
a) I've done lots of trips that have left small gaps that I can fill in by either a specifically targetted ride, or by taking a parallel road on a planned bike ride, or like the tile I got on Saturday's audax, by a short ~500m diversion.
b) I wanna go for a ride but I'm bored of the same old roads, where can I go that I've not been before? ooh, I could go here and bag these tiles.
My explorer score is quite high compared to both my cluster and my max square, because I have done things like my long trip to Hell. All being well, TCR should have a similar impact for me this year too. There are many metrics that can be used to compare how people ride using the veloviewer tiles. max square, max cluster, explorer score, or even ratios of the two. What's the ratio between your square, and your explorer score? For the cluster, what is the width/height ratio like?
Pick your metric, see where it drives you...
J