3 Nov
Could I gently remind you to pay for the season if you haven’t already?
Puzzle of the week: mate in one move — reckoned to be one of the hardest!
Hints (click-drag-select to view):
- Black’s last move was with a pawn
- The e-pawn
- From e7
- eep…
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13th October
Welcome to Yas and our special returning guest Mr.B!
A puzzle from Baker:
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Puzzle corner
Mr.B was always very good at producing a puzzle for us each week. Today’s puzzle comes from Mr.Lees — many thanks!
You’re Black, and you can checkmate White in two moves (you move, White moves, then you play checkmate).
HINTS: select the text below the numbers
1.
[White doesn’t have many moves]
2.
[If you can play …Na6xBc7 it’s checkmate]
3.
[Can you force White to put their Bishop on c7? (yes!)]
SOLUTION: reveal by clicking the [ > ] button.
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A second step
Welcome back to some old friends we missed last week, and a warm welcome to Reuben, Dylan and Teddy.
Sorry I didn’t get around to printing a rating list this week — Tuesday proved to be a longer day at work than I expected! — but they’re all there on the website and updated this evening.
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Two puzzles in one
Dr Dave dug out one of his favourite puzzles, which is actually two puzzles in one (White to play and checkmate Black quickly).
But Dave, which way are the Black pawns going?
It doesn’t matter! It’s mate in three either way.
SOLUTIONS (select below to reveal)
a. bottom left = a1 : 1.Bc6 bxc6 2.Kc8 c5 3.Nc7#
b. bottom left = h8:
1. Kc6 b8=Q 2.Nc7+ Qxc7+ 3. Kxc7#
or 1…b8=N+ 2.Kc7+ Nc6 3.Bxc6# -
Good, bad and OK pawn moves
We’ve been going through the multiple-choice questions in Chess Choice Challenge, and some we have done quite quickly. But this one took us most of a session to talk about!
Chess Choice Challenge (Ward & Emms) Test 1, Q19
We struggled a bit with ‘unnecessary’ — surely none of are actually ‘necessary’? But maybe some of them are good and some of them are bad. Try and decide for yourself before reading on!
1. 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nf3 Nxe4 5.d4 Be7 6. Bd3 Nf6 7. h3 — a good move, keeping Black’s Bishop on c8 from finding a good square
2. 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 h6 — a bad move — Ng5 is not a threat now and won’t be next move either (even if your next move is 3…Nf6, but you have to know that one)
3. 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qa5 4. d4 Nf6 5. Nf3 Bg4 6. h3 — a good move, forcing the Bishop to make up its mind — we get the Bishop pair (6…Bxf3) or King’s-side space (6…Bh5 7.g4)
4. 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. Bg5 Ne4 6. cxd5 Nxg5 7. Nxg5 e6 8. Nf3 exd5 9. e3 O-O 10.b4 — a move that is part of a good plan, the minority attack, hoping to make use of the half-open c-file. (That needs a good 10-minutes of explanation if you haven’t heard of it before!)
So, only 2 is bad, so we decided the answer was C. That was hard work!
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Grotesque!
Otto Blathy composed chess problems. But the ones he liked were a bit funny! The positions could never happen in a game, but they usually had a nice idea in them.
These gnarly positions are called grotesques.Mr.B showed me this one many years ago: White to play and win! Black is moving down the board — well, that’s if they could move…
Puzzle 1
And I just found this one: White to play and win, again
Puzzle 2
So, they’re quite long, for a chess puzzle, but there is really just one idea to find — if you can!
Otto also holds a world record, for the longest solution to a chess problem. How long? Mate in 290! Surely that’s a draw under the 50-move rule? Well, actually no! But the solution is so long it broke my database… White could win if Black did something silly, like 1…Bb7, letting White make a new Queen. But Black has lots of other things to do! Well, we can wait…
Puzzle 3
Puzzle 1
Hints for Puzzle 1 (click-drag to select)
- If Black moves either Knight, White can checkmate with the Knight
- If White moves their Knight, Black can move a Knight without losing, and then the g-pawn, and then get the Queen out, and then White loses.
- At the moment, Black can only shuffle the Queen up and down.
- If White moves the King to a light square from the corner, Black can check with a Knight, and then hop back…
- So White can move Kg7, (Black goes Qh3), Kg6 (no …Ne4+ because of mate, so Black goes Qh4)… now what?
- It would be nice if White could go Kg6 when the Q is already on h4, then we would have …Qh3, Kxg5, Qh4+; Kxh4, then Black must move a Knight and lose.
- So can you lose a move with the King? Well, yes, but watch out that you don’t get checked!
Puzzle 2
Hints for Puzzle 2 (click-drag to select)
- Only the White Queen can move, and you can’t mate with Q alone
- You can chase the King around the board
- Maybe you can chase the King away from the action, and dash back to do… something!
- The something is… Qxh3! Then you have a passed pawn.
Puzzle 3
Hints for Puzzle 3
- Some puzzles are meant to be admired and not solved…