Guardian publishes solutions to four quirky chess puzzles
6 reported
The Guardian published solutions to four chess puzzles it had set earlier in the day. The puzzles included proving that the number of players who played an odd number of games in a tournament must be even, determining whether a knight can visit every square on an 8×8 board exactly once and end on the opposite corner, finding the fewest moves for a pawn to promote and return to its starting square, and swapping the positions of two pairs of knights on a strangely shaped grid. The solutions were provided in the article, with the final problem discussed in a YouTube clip. The puzzles were contributed by the charity We Solve Problems, which runs free maths circles for secondary school pupils in the UK. The article noted that the puzzle setter has been setting a puzzle on alternate Mondays since 2015.
What’s reported
The article presented solutions to four chess puzzles.
Puzzle 1: The number of players who played an odd number of games must be even because the total number of games played must be even.
Puzzle 2: A knight cannot start in the bottom right corner and end in the top left corner after visiting every square exactly once, because opposite corners are the same color.
Puzzle 3: The fewest number of moves for a pawn to leave its initial place, get promoted, and return to its original position is 6.
Puzzle 4: The solution to swapping the two pairs of knights on a strangely shaped grid involves a train shunting problem approach.
The puzzles were provided by We Solve Problems, a charity that runs free maths circles for secondary school pupils in the UK.
Key figures
We Solve Problems (charity)
The Guardian (source outlet)
Sources: The Guardian
