A Few Cheerful Days on the Normal Side After another year of fun and puzzles, it's time again for our holiday break to "the normal side of chess". Like the ghosts of columns past, we have an assortment of direct mates, endgame studies, and game positions. Let's hear it for 2015. Cheers, everyone! 1 White to mate in two Nothing is more enticing for potential solvers than a spacious two-move mate. Merediths (8-12 pieces) and miniatures (7 or less) are natural-born crowd-pleasers. 2 White to mate in two Next up is a basic winning rook endgame. Unfortunately, you are playing blitz and you only have time for three more moves. Can you score the point? 3 White to mate in … [Read more...]
Proof Games: Switchback City
Proof Games: Switchback City The task in a proof game is to show how a given position can be reached in a legal game. The puzzles in this column have a move stipulation. The position must be reached in a precise number of moves, no more and no less. With one exception, they are proof games in 4.0 which means four moves by each side. There is a distinct lack of strategy in these games. But the moves are legal. Proof Game #37 The diagrammed position, with White to play, was reached in a game after each player made exactly four moves. Can you figure out how? A switchback is a move in a chess problem where a piece returns to a square that it previously stood on. This tactic can … [Read more...]
Knight Tricks Bishop
by Bruce Pandolfini There is that silly opening principle/maxim "knights before bishops." And everyone knows that bishops are better than knights, right? Well, not always, for either truism. Now it is generally considered to be an easier task for a bishop to trap a knight, say by corralling it, than for a knight to snare a bishop. Perhaps. But knights also have their strengths. They can jump over things, though not tall buildings in a single bound. They can, however, do their special prancing, and that can lead to all kinds of insidious forks. The latter class of stratagem is mainly what happens in this present pack of ten. Just when the bishop thinks it is safe to take a swim, it forgets … [Read more...]
Cyclotronic Joyride
by Jeff Coakley The main attraction in this week’s column is a “carousel of cyclotrons”. But first, let’s play the old switcheroo. In case you’re new to switcheroos, here are the rules. The goal is to put the black king in checkmate by switching the position of two pieces. No actual chess moves are made. The pieces simply swap squares. Any two pieces can switch places. Colours do not matter. You can trade white with white, black with black, or white with black. Switching the black king is a common trick. One important rule is that the position after the switch must be legal. A position is legal if it could occur in an actual game. This rule implies several things. a) A … [Read more...]
The Number 64
The Number 64 by Jeff Coakley Welcome to another cafe smorgasbord of puzzles. Our special menu this week celebrates somebody’s sixty-fourth birthday. The types of puzzles presented in this column have appeared previously on The Puzzling Side of Chess. If you are unfamiliar with any of them, examples with more detailed explanations are available in the archives. 1. Triple Loyd #39 Place the black king on the board so that: A. Black is in checkmate. B. Black is in stalemate. C. White has mate in one. The number 64 is interesting in many ways. For example, it is the smallest number which is both a perfect square and a perfect cube. 64 = 8² = 4³ Do you know what the next … [Read more...]
Exchange Power: Rooks Over Bishops
by Bruce Pandolfini If you trade pieces, you exchange pieces, with the word "exchange" being written in lower case. But if you gain a rook for a bishop (or for a knight), you win the Exchange, with a capital "E," as the great Burt Hochberg used to say to me upon editing my pieces, that is, the written kind of pieces. Now in the old days, at least at the Marshall Chess Club, to avoid upper and lower case confusion, chess players would also refer to winning or gaining the Exchange as winning or gaining quality, whenever they got ahead by a rook for a bishop or a rook for a knight. But let's jump to the present. In all ten problems offered this month, however it is phrased, you are presented … [Read more...]
Little King Moves
Let's talk about the king. It is supposed to be a weak piece. Actually, it can be a fairly strong piece, since it guards all the circumambient squares. On its inherent merits, a king is slightly stronger than either a bishop or knight, and slightly weaker than a rook. But it is always on the board, and in the endgame its use can be decisive. Many tactics truly depend on the active help of the friendly king. There can be mating nets, piece traps, and other nasty things once the attacking king gets going. Now the king's involvement does not have to be a big production. Sometimes it makes a small move, which translates to a big advantage. And that is the case here. For each of the problems in … [Read more...]