Guardian Columnist Presents Four Chess Puzzles
The Story
The Guardian’s puzzle column has published four chess-inspired puzzles, drawn from a charity that runs free maths circles for UK secondary school pupils. The puzzles cover a tournament with odd game counts, a knight’s tour, a pawn promotion return, and a knight-swapping exercise on a shaped grid.
Key Facts
- The article presents four puzzles “inspired by chess.”
- It mentions recent documentaries on Judit Polgár and Hans Niemann.
- Puzzle 1: “Oddities” – a chess tournament where not every player played every other; some played an odd number of games; readers are asked to prove the number of such players is even.
- Puzzle 2: “L of a trip” – asks if a knight starting in the bottom right corner of an 8×8 board can visit every square exactly once and end in the top left corner.
- Puzzle 3: “Pawn return” – asks the fewest number of moves for a pawn to leave its initial place, get promoted/queened, and return to its starting square, assuming cooperating players.
- Puzzle 4: “Four knights” – asks to swap two pairs of knights on a strangely-shaped grid, with the note to “think abstractly.”
- The puzzles come from We Solve Problems, a charity that runs free maths circles for secondary school pupils (years 7 to 11) in over a dozen UK cities, led by postgraduates and PhD students.
- The column has been published on alternate Mondays since 2015.
- No solutions are provided in the article; the writer states they will return at 5pm UK with solutions.
Conflicting Reports
No conflicting reports identified in the source article.
Still Unclear
- Whether a full answer to each puzzle will be provided later (not in this text).
- The specific “strangely-shaped grid” for puzzle 4 is not described.
Misconceptions
No widespread misconceptions addressed in the source article.
Key Figures
- Judit Polgár (mentioned as subject of a documentary).
- Hans Niemann (mentioned as subject of a documentary).
Sources: The Guardian
