Questions tagged [chess]
A puzzle related to chess, a two-player board game with white and black pieces of varying ranks.
58 questions from the last 365 days
18
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2
answers
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Pawn on the run!
Place a pawn and a knight anywhere on an infinite chessboard. The pawn has stolen a magic carpet that allows it to move one square up or one square right each move. The knight can move as usual.
The ...
- 1,246
19
votes
1
answer
329
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Who’s got the gig?
A motley troupe of four unlikely band members have disguised themselves by encoding their identities.
Who are they?
№ 𓏤
gggg gggg gggg
gggg gggg gggg
gggg gggg gggg
gggg ggg
№ 𓏤𓏤
...
- 2,145
10
votes
3
answers
596
views
Revisiting "Switch The Knights"
This is a follow-up question to the good old puzzle Switch The Knights:
Envoys from two rival kingdoms meet face-to-face in a very narrow
corridor of a neutral castle. The corridor is a grid exactly ...
- 36.6k
5
votes
2
answers
299
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Maximum Board Coverage: One of Every Chess Piece
I am trying to find the maximum number of squares that can be threatened on a standard chessboard using exactly one of each chess piece.
You have exactly 6 pieces of the same color:
1 King
1 Queen
1 ...
- 36.6k
5
votes
2
answers
232
views
Control every square on the board with as few duplicate pieces as possible
I like the puzzle How many Chess Pieces are needed to control every square on the board? No Piece Restriction asked 11 years ago.
Here is a variant
Control every square on the board and use as few ...
- 8,859
3
votes
0
answers
144
views
Shortest Tour from a Rainbow Chess Piece
The Rainbow Chess Piece is defined as a Chess Piece that initially is a Queen and transforms to the next piece every time it moves in this order:
Queen, King (ladies first!), Rook, Bishop, Knight, ...
- 8,859
4
votes
1
answer
214
views
Maximize the distance between two chess positions
For two same pieces $p_1$ and $p_2$ of the same color (Black or White) on two chess positions where each square is of length 1, we define their distance by:
$d(p_1, p_2) =$
\begin{cases}
0,& \...
- 8,859
16
votes
1
answer
755
views
White to move and series-mate in 13.
White to move and series-mate in 13.
In this series-mate, White makes 13 moves in a row but Black does not move at all. The goal is for White to mate on their 13th move.
At no time can White be in ...
- 35.1k
2
votes
2
answers
665
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White to move and mate in 2
To allow new users to solve this puzzle and earn reputation points, I encourage all users whose reputation is 200 or more to not post an answer until 48 hours after this question is posted. Thank you!
...
- 35.1k
11
votes
1
answer
421
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Ernie and the Toroidal Chess Board
I popped in to Ernie's place after I heard he had got back from the conference. His front door was open, so I walked in and found him sitting at the dining room table studying a chess end-game set up ...
- 14.9k
7
votes
2
answers
1k
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Mate in 3 vs WorstFish
In this position, it is white to play.
FEN: 8/1b6/4K3/2k5/7R/8/3N4/8
White must checkmate Black in 3 moves, and both moves by Black must be WorstFish moves (the ...
- 4,924
12
votes
1
answer
450
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What happened to the missing Pawns?
Here comes a new retrograde chess puzzle! This one might be a bit tricky. :)
In the tangled position below, both sides have only seven pawns remaining. What happened to the other two?
Can you uncover ...
- 11.5k
14
votes
1
answer
585
views
How many chess proof games?
How many ways to reach this position after Black's 13th move? Happy New Year!
(Freshly published in Problemas magazine: https://sepa64.blogspot.com/p/revista-problemas-nueva-epoca.html See also Valery ...
- 5,751
4
votes
1
answer
315
views
A vicious mating sequence
The chess game depicted below has ended by White delivering a sneaky back rank mate. How did that play out?
Can you determine the last seven single moves?
(15 + 8), FEN: kR1R4/p1PPpp1Q/2KBp2P/1BN5/8/...
- 11.5k
9
votes
1
answer
511
views
Position where a player can either force mate or selfmate
The audience is on the edge of their seat. They all see the checkmate, but does White see it too? White finally makes their move! To everyone’s horror, instead of going for checkmate, White goes for ...
- 1,367