  We propose a new polynomial-time deterministic algorithm that produces an
approximated solution for the traveling salesperson problem. The proposed
algorithm ranks cities based on their priorities calculated using a power
function of means and standard deviations of their distances from other cities
and then connects the cities to their neighbors in the order of their
priorities. When connecting a city, a neighbor is selected based on their
neighbors' priorities calculated as another power function that additionally
includes their distance from the focal city to be connected. This repeats until
all the cities are connected into a single loop. The time complexity of the
proposed algorithm is $O(n^2)$, where $n$ is the number of cities. Numerical
evaluation shows that, despite its simplicity, the proposed algorithm produces
shorter tours with less time complexity than other conventional tour
construction heuristics. The proposed algorithm can be used by itself or as an
initial tour generator for other more complex heuristic optimization
algorithms.
