Guardian publishes solutions to four quirky chess puzzles
7 reported
The Guardian published solutions to four chess puzzles it had set earlier in the day. The puzzles included a proof about odd numbers of games in a tournament, a knight’s tour problem, a pawn promotion puzzle, and a knight-swapping problem on a shaped grid. The solutions were provided in the article, with the final problem linked to 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 series has been running on alternate Mondays since 2015.
What’s reported
The article presents solutions to four chess puzzles.
Puzzle 1: In a tournament where not every player plays every other, the number of players who played an odd number of games must be even.
Puzzle 2: A knight starting in the bottom right corner of an 8×8 board cannot visit every square exactly once and end in the top left corner.
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 knights on a shaped grid involves a train shunting problem approach.
The puzzles were provided by the charity We Solve Problems.
The charity runs free maths circles for secondary school pupils (years 7 to 11) in more than a dozen UK cities.
Key figures
We Solve Problems (charity)
The Guardian (source outlet)
Sources: The Guardian
