I had a chess position today, in which my last position had 5 possible moves to checkmate. This seemed like a lot to me, and I immediately thought of the puzzle: Which position would yield the maximum number of ways to checkmate the opponent on the next move?
The rules of my made up puzzle are thus
- Exactly 1 King per side
- Any amount of any other kinds of pieces are allowed for either side
- "Score" for the position is the number of winning moves there are
I came up with the following position. By my count, this has 70 total winning moves. I wonder what the maximum would be?
Follow up puzzles which occurred to me:
- What's the fewest number of pieces for which every legal move would be checkmate?
- Pawns aren't allowed
- Exactly 1 King per side
- White to move. All black pieces are counted in the answer
- Alternate rule: you can only have one kind of piece, so there's a unique answer for each kind of piece
- What's the fewest number of points for which every legal move would be checkmate?
- Pawns aren't allowed
- Exactly 1 King per side
- White to move. All black pieces' points are counted in the answer
- Q=9,R=5,B=3,N=3,K=3
Anyone have any suggested solutions to the above puzzles?