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Aug 12 at 9:35 vote accept Bass
Aug 11 at 15:42 comment added supercat @AxiomaticSystem: That video inspired me to immediately see a solution involving coloring similar to yours, except that I would have started by observing that there would either be four black rooks or four white rooks, and that whichever color of rooks there were four of would see all of the white squares on the chessboard.
Aug 8 at 23:31 comment added AxiomaticSystem @supercat I think I know which video you're talking about, but I haven't watched it.
Aug 8 at 22:56 comment added supercat Did you happen to see a recent "Cracking the Cryptic" episode that used this same principle?
Aug 8 at 0:44 comment added lily @kagami I posted a solution which elaborates the row and column swapping idea a little.
Aug 7 at 16:20 history edited AxiomaticSystem CC BY-SA 4.0
an explanation that should please everyone
Aug 7 at 14:21 comment added kagami Actually, row and column swapping feels like a dead end. It's easier to just generalize the construction for any queen position.
Aug 7 at 0:56 comment added AxiomaticSystem @kagami You can move the square colors along with the rows, although I'll try to come up with a more direct explanation soon.
Aug 7 at 0:48 comment added kagami Exchanging rows and columns to move the queen potentially puts the rooks on white squares (not really, but that's the gap in the proof, to my mind)
Aug 6 at 20:34 comment added Bass This is exactly the answer I was looking for, illustrated even better than I thought possible! If you could add a word or two about how you can always find this colouring (regardless of the queen's position) by following the dark squares on the queen's rank and file, I have a shiny checkmark ready for you :-)
Aug 6 at 11:39 history edited AxiomaticSystem CC BY-SA 4.0
added 232 characters in body
Aug 6 at 2:48 comment added RobPratt Need to argue that the same situation happens for every white square, but otherwise looks good.
Aug 6 at 0:17 history answered AxiomaticSystem CC BY-SA 4.0