Roland's Puzzle Challenge #5: Checkmate
Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2013 4:41 pmRoland's Puzzle Challenge #5 -- You Broke the Code
Difficulty -- Very Hard
Google allowed? -- NO
"In lieu of the XI kids being allowed to form some sort of team, I thought it might be good to go over some fundamental strategy, and what's better at fundamental strategy than chess?
I heard you in the back there. Quiet.
Chess has been around for ages -- it formed in India, actually. No, I didn't create it. MODERN chess dates back to, oh, about the 1200s in Southern Europe. We used to call this "Mad Queen" Chess, because the Queen zips along the board like nobody's business -- this replaced a piece called the "Vizier", and it's still called that in Persian and whatnot. Anyway, the Queen is certainly the most valuable piece, as it has freedom of movement -- speed, as in all things, is imperative on the chess board.
Your puzzle today is this -- given a standard chess board, place as many queens on it as you can so that none of them can attack one another. No, this doesn't mean "all the queens are White, therefore they are on the same side" -- that'd be obvious, the answer would be just place 64 queens on the board. Show me how many queens you can place on a standard, 8x8 chess board so that none of them could capture any other."
Difficulty -- Very Hard
Google allowed? -- NO
"In lieu of the XI kids being allowed to form some sort of team, I thought it might be good to go over some fundamental strategy, and what's better at fundamental strategy than chess?
I heard you in the back there. Quiet.
Chess has been around for ages -- it formed in India, actually. No, I didn't create it. MODERN chess dates back to, oh, about the 1200s in Southern Europe. We used to call this "Mad Queen" Chess, because the Queen zips along the board like nobody's business -- this replaced a piece called the "Vizier", and it's still called that in Persian and whatnot. Anyway, the Queen is certainly the most valuable piece, as it has freedom of movement -- speed, as in all things, is imperative on the chess board.
Your puzzle today is this -- given a standard chess board, place as many queens on it as you can so that none of them can attack one another. No, this doesn't mean "all the queens are White, therefore they are on the same side" -- that'd be obvious, the answer would be just place 64 queens on the board. Show me how many queens you can place on a standard, 8x8 chess board so that none of them could capture any other."
