Roland's Puzzle Challenge #5: Checkmate

[Roland Sackville]

Roland'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."

[Thomas Bowen]

Tommy took the chessboard and a couple handfuls of queens, and sat down at his desk, scrunching his brows.

"We'll, there can't be two on the same line, and there are eight rows..."

[Kay Haddock]

"Pff, that's easy..." Kay mumbles and starts drawing. It ends up not quite as easy as she thought but after a while of horsey-jumping around the board she drew with her finger she lets out a short "Woo!" before filling in the positions on the board.

[Steve Jones]

Steve frowned in thought. He was trying to draw it as well but wasn't getting it.

I'm starting to hate puzzles.

[Thomas Bowen]

Tommy got to seven queens after a while, smiling as he then tried adding the eighth queen. His smile quickly faded.

"Oh, come on..."