The reason davidm told you that this puzzle was anarchist-themed is because I told him envisioned the humor of this puzzle coming from the fact that the enemy king is chased through his own encampment while a bunch of put-upon feudal characters look on his fate with indifference, perhaps even rooting for the success of the king hunt. Notice also that none of the "workers" are taken; the revolution only targets the "boss".
This new puzzle comes from a winning correspondence game at another site of one of the members here: Pan Narrans.
I quite simply love this position. I won't spoil the puzzle by being too frank about why I love it, but suffice it to say that it's an inherently aesthetically attractive position that leads to several thematic elements common to chess puzzles, including a choice of two rare checkmates.
But I think I may be missing something because I'm not so sure Kh3 is the optimal move for white.
Or is this where the theme of the puzzle comes in? Depending on the king's move after 1. ... Rf4, the number of moves to mate changes?
If so, I'm having a rough time figuring out which is the 4 and which is the 5 move version out of Kg5 and Kh5.
Some hints below the fold:
Yes, that's exactly the theme. You've correctly solved the mate in three version of the puzzle. As a hint, the mate in four move is ...Kg5 (there are unavoidably two versions depending on where the White king moves on the third time, but Black's moves remain the same) and the mate in five move is ...Kh5, which only has one set of moves, a forced mate by a constant series of checks.
If you really cannot solve it after a while, I posted the solution with the next puzzle after this one.
[FONT="Georgia"]Yeah, that puzzle was far too easy Nullifidian.
Try this one, a mate in 2 moves with white to move.
Waaaaaait a damn minute... is this what I think it is?
There's absolutely no way to solve this unless the prior move was 0. ... e5 - and e7-e5 at that.
Unless I'm missing something, this is only doable with an e.p., like so:
1. dxe5+ (e.p.) Kg8
2. Rc8#
I probably wouldn't have spotted this if you guys hadn't talked about "a rare move" and, well, there was an e.p. in the game Nullifidian and I are currently playing.
__________________ Father Helel, save us from the dark.
Now the following puzzle is a fantasy position, of course. No chess game is ever going to end up looking like this. Still, it's a fun puzzle, and does have some thematic elements in common with well-played chess games.
Black King, d8.
White king, white pawn, white knight, white bishop, white rook, white queen.
1. The black king is in checkmate.
2. Thus, d8, and the five surrounding squares, are each attacked by a white piece.
3. Each white piece attacks exactly one of those six squares.
4. The position could result from legal play (though not necessarily PLAUSIBLE play).
Possible, or no?
I think the answer is "yes", for everything but 4, and probably also 4 -- I can show a situation a couple of moves earlier which appears to be able to lead to this.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
I'm afraid neither of those options are correct. Though you did find mates in six, neither of them are forced (e.g. in your last post, Black doesn't have to play d3, but could play f4 followed by f5, giving the King an escape square at f6.
The way to make sure the king doesn't escape is as follows:
(Spoilers included in case anyone else wants to work it out for themselves.)
There was this wonderful chess book I read as a kid, I don't remember the author or the name, but it was a big (> 8.5x11) paperback about an inch thick.
It was pretty solid, but... It tended to assume consistent flawless play, and I think it's where I picked up the phrase, regarding an opening gambit, "The lost pawn cannot be regained. Black will lose in due course."
I may have found it! I am suspecting it is either "The Art of Chess" by James Mason or "The Game of Chess" by Siegbert Tarrasch. Maybe. Neither has the cover I remember, but they're both plausibly close in writing style.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
My first game with Contrapposto reminded me of a Knights tour puzzle.
(Cover every square on the board only once, least number of moves.)
Some solutions have the Knight finishing back where it started.
Here is Contra's gallivanting Knight and its opening moves.
By the time he made his 7th move in the opening game he had moved the same piece 4 times having traveled from B8 to C6 to E5 to G6 to H4.
By that stage I thought his Knight had gone insane and its owner was blind to a pending Knight/Bishop attack I had underway on C7
(eventually winning a pawn and his Queen.)
But I was the one with the blind spot and Contra’s marathon Knight did have a plan. Of course Contra went on to win the game after mortally wounding me and my opening position with the gallivanting Knight’s fifth move in such a short time.
I've been playing around with JavaScript and I made a version of MinAttak that runs in any modern browser (providing you can drag-and-drop - so normally that means using a mouse). At the moment it's manual only, but I may add a solver and other features if I don't get bored with it.
The thing below should actually work - it's not just an image. Try dragging some pieces onto the board.
Doesn't work for me. The chess pieces pick up but they don't place onto the board. I tried the URL inside the frame in a separate window, but no luck.
(Chrome, Mac OSX)
ETA: Works on Chrome in Windows.
__________________
ta-
DAVE!!!
Last edited by specious_reasons; 12-02-2017 at 06:31 PM.
It works with both Chrome and Firefox in Linux. I'll test it out with Windows and my old Mac Mini to see if I can fix it, and I can also try it in Safari and Opera I guess.
Edit1: Chrome and Firefox work in Windows 10. Microsoft Edge (ugh!) sort of works but the chessboard squares remain invisible because of Edge's funky handling of css colours. I refuse to even try IE !
Edit2: On Mac, Safari works. Chrome doesn't work and its debug console reports:
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'cloneNode' of null
at drop (MinAttak.js:253)
at HTMLDivElement.ondrop (MinAttak.html:1)
I'll try to figure out what that means and fix it. Edit3: Now fixed!
It would be useful to have a 'reset' button, so when you want to start over you don't have to drag all the pieces off the board. But of course that isn't a request or anything, it's pretty cool as it is, it's just a suggestion.
Re: Chess Puzzles
Edit3: Now fixed!
Linear Mode
