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        riddles >> hard >> Re: SelfHelpMate in 5
        
(Message started by: Ulkesh on Apr 9^th, 2003, 2:49pm)

Title: Re: SelfHelpMate in 5
Post by Ulkesh on Apr 9^th, 2003, 2:49pm

That's a really nice puzzle :)

I've just begun working on it. I'll see how long it takes me...

Title: Re: Cooperative Chess Game
Post by Ulkesh on Apr 9^th, 2003, 4:57pm

Ha! I think I have it!
...

[hide]
1. e4 nf6
2. f3 nxe4
3. qe2 ng3
4. qxe7 qxe7+
5. kf2 nxh1++
[/hide]

I'd urge you not to look at the answer, and try to work this out for yourself. It really is a wonderful puzzle, and I'm sure you'd get a lot more satisfaction working the puzzle out for yourself than you would if you looked at the answer.

Title: Re: Cooperative Chess Game
Post by cho on Apr 9^th, 2003, 6:13pm

Just glancing at your solution, (I haven't actually played it out, so I may be wrong), but what's to keep the king from moving to f3

Title: Re: Cooperative Chess Game
Post by cho on Apr 9^th, 2003, 6:15pm

Oops, ignore that, I missed the pawn there.

Title: Re: Cooperative Chess Game
Post by cho on Apr 10^th, 2003, 9:31am

But, Thud, he told us he was just starting to work on it. He told us to time him. He waited a whole two hours. You can't believe that someone smart enough to beat Kasparov at chess would be that transparent.

Title: Re: Cooperative Chess Game
Post by Ulkesh on Apr 10^th, 2003, 11:07am

Cho, you're being a bit cynical aren't you...?

As it happens, I did solve it on my own. I'll admit I did read through the comments on the page Thud linked to. This gave one or two small clues, like that the solution was unique, and that it was likely that Black delivered the mate...

However, I'm not the only person who solved the puzzle relatively quickly (if you look at the comments, a few people did it within 20 minutes or so). And I do play chess fairly regularly, so there's no reason why I should lack the chess know-how to solve it.

And the reason I posted when I began attempting the problem was so that I could prove how long it took me should I actually solve the problem!

Title: Re: Cooperative Chess Game
Post by SWF on Apr 10^th, 2003, 8:07pm

This riddle was already on William Wu's main riddle page under the title "Chess Game Reconstruction". I find it hard to believe that all those great chess players had problems with this. At first I thought the claims on that link provided in the OP were a hoax, but it looks like a reputable site. Maybe good chess players are not used to thinking in terms of crazy moves.

My first thoughts on this were that, assuming no rooks are moved, it takes a knight 4 moves to capture it. White already used up its non-knight move so black probably wins. For the knight to be on the rook square and put the king in check where must it be, and what piece needs to be moved to get there? Black probably needs to put the white king's starting point in check and only has one non-knight move left, so white probably needs to capture one of the black pawns. There are a number of assumptions there (like the knight that takes rook doesn't necessarily have to put the king in check), but they quickly lead to the solution and are fairly reasonable considering the small number of moves allowed.

Title: Re: Cooperative Chess Game
Post by towr on Apr 10^th, 2003, 11:06pm

on 04/10/03 at 20:07:49, SWF wrote:

This riddle was already on William Wu's main riddle page under the title "Chess Game Reconstruction".

I think that's the case because Thud send it to William.
Though it would be a good idea if the titles matched (in case someone tried to search for the topic based on the problem on the site)

Title: Re: Chess Game Reconstruction
Post by THUDandBLUNDER on Apr 11^th, 2003, 12:57am

Quote:

Though it would be a good idea if the titles matched (in case someone tried to search for the topic based on the problem on the site)

Oops...mea culpa. I originally titled the thread 'SelfHelpMate in 5' but remembered that William had already named it something else. And perhaps I shouldn't have given the link to the ChessBase site; while making the puzzle more interesting, it also made it easier, as there are lots of hints available there.