Questions tagged [checkerboard]
A puzzle involving checkerboards: grids of squares alternating black and white in color, most commonly an 8x8 board.
162
questions
19
votes
1answer
1k views
Beans under the chessboard
Under every grid cell of a chessboard, I put either one bean or nothing.
Now if you choose a (grid) rectangular area on the chessboard, then I will tell you the parity of the number of beans under ...
24
votes
2answers
1k views
The Knight's Romp
Recently I was messing around with a singular knight on a chess board, and I came up with an interesting dilemma.
Can you move a knight, from starting on any square, such that its path covers every ...
5
votes
1answer
485 views
Chess - Knight Mate
What is the fastest, in terms of moves, for a legal game to come to a checkmate, either black or white with a Knight and such that both all other cases of the checkmated King are attacked by an ...
5
votes
0answers
193 views
Choosing squares on a square board [closed]
I have an $8 \times 8$ board. On the board, I want to choose 2 unit squares in each column and row such that none of the chosen squares are touching. This means they cannot share a side or a corner. ...
4
votes
1answer
142 views
Chess - I will eat!
Suppose that you are playing White, and your aim is to eat a black piece (pawns qualitfy) in the fewest moves as possible and Black are not cooperating at all, and, even more, Black's aim is to ...
4
votes
1answer
99 views
How many queens are needed to attack all white squares?
This question: How can 3 queens control the white squares? got me thinking...
What is the fewest number of queens needed to attack every white square?
Rules:
Only queens allowed
Every white square is ...
30
votes
5answers
5k views
How can 3 queens control the white squares?
It is well known that there is no way of arranging 4 queens on a checker board in such a way that every square is occupied or threatened.
Now consider a slight variation where we only need to cover ...
10
votes
1answer
426 views
Grid infection with diagonal adjacencies
A community consists of 81 houses laid out in a 9 x 9 square grid. Every household is friends with their eight orthogonal and diagonal neighbors (except for the houses on the perimeter which have only ...
4
votes
2answers
174 views
Maximum number of kings that can exit
N kings are placed on a chessboard, with at most one king on any square. Following standard rules of movement (one square in any direction), every king must be able to reach some edge of the board ...
5
votes
4answers
431 views
Most Captures Chess
In Most Captures Chess puzzle, you will need to provide a legal game where it is Blacks to play and where they have the most different ways to capture a White piece.
For instance, the next game allows ...
0
votes
1answer
123 views
How many roads in a Tak square?
The board game Tak is played on a chess-like board of variable size (most commonly, 5x5 and 6x6). Players place and move pieces on the board with the goal of creating a "road", which is a ...
5
votes
3answers
263 views
A tribute to “Most ways to uncheck the king”
Today, we had the great privilege to see @Paul Panzer's answer being ticked at @thesilican's absorbing puzzle.
I here propose a variant of his puzzle where it's not mandatory to use a legal chess game....
5
votes
2answers
166 views
Switching Black and White
In this Chess puzzle, your aim is to switch black and white, with a legal game, and arrive at the final position:
This aim is likely unreachable. So you must try to get the maximum number of pieces ...
25
votes
6answers
3k views
Chess solitaire: The King's longest walk
Challenge: maximize the number of moves white needs for its king to reach a square of your choosing, adhering to the following rules:
Black does not move
Like normal: The king may not be in a ...
6
votes
2answers
334 views
Fastest draw from opening position in chess
When playing a normal game of chess, assuming the opponents are cooperating:
In how many moves can a draw be unavoidable, excluding voluntary draws or draws by repetition of moves?
1 While not ...
7
votes
2answers
1k views
The Popular Letter Chessboard
You are given a Chess board with black and white squares.
You must fill your Chess board with Merriam Webster English words, or other equivalent dictionnaries if you prefer such that each square ...
4
votes
1answer
194 views
Kings' Chess Harem
Pursueing these two related puzzles, Chess Bloodshed and Devouring Nobility I create for you Kings' Chess Harem where you have to find, with the minimum number of moves, a legal game where all pawns ...
10
votes
2answers
1k views
Chess Bloodshed
This puzzle is the idea of Dmitry Kamenetsky in a comment of my puzzle Devouring Nobility.
Find, with the minimum number of moves, a legal game where all pieces are captured except the two kings.
2
votes
2answers
206 views
Magic rotated checkerboard function made in python!
Here's a puzzle for all you python programmers out there:
I defined a function that goes like this:
...
3
votes
1answer
191 views
Create the freest arrangement of white chess pieces on board by consequently moving your pieces
You start with this board. You're the White. Freedom Index of initial arrangment of your chess pieces is equal to 20 (each pawn has two moves, each knight has two moves)
Your goal is to have as much ...
19
votes
3answers
2k views
Painting a chessboard
On the following chessboard every white square meets at least two red squares.
Let's paint a new chessboard so that every white square meets exactly two red square. Every square should be painted ...
10
votes
1answer
555 views
Playing with a chess cipher
Alice and Bob both love encryption, and Alice loves to play chess. Unfortunately, Bob isn't very good at chess, so he doesn't think it's very fair to have to play the game for real. So instead of ...
10
votes
1answer
310 views
A chessboard tiling with corners removed in 3D
A famous problem asks whether an 8x8 chessboard with two opposite corners deleted can be tiled with dominoes, where a domino is a rectangle congruent to two adjacent squares of the board.
Now, let C ...
4
votes
1answer
130 views
A interesting and a bold chess puzzle
Here is a chess puzzle I have made . It needed a lot of thinking .
If you are white , how would you play in this position ? State your best moves !!
Please don't use Stockfish or Alphazero or any ...
15
votes
1answer
687 views
Arrange ten pawns into ten lines of three
This is not a chess problem!
In the following position you can see six pawns that have been arranged into lines of three. Each pawn stands at the intersection of exactly two lines and each line ...
1
vote
3answers
322 views
Class Chess Tournament
A class of 36 students are expecting to play in the chess tournament held by Math Department. When the schoolmaster arrived he said "Lets start the games but first we must setup all the chess ...
15
votes
2answers
2k views
A Rook's Territory in the Chessboard
Shade 32 cells, four on each row and column, of an 8 x 8 blank chessboard (all its cells originally white) so that a rook sitting on any shaded cell can reach any other shaded cell, moving just along ...
asked May 19 '20 at 17:36
Bernardo Recamán Santos
12.8k2 gold badges23 silver badges115 bronze badges
3
votes
2answers
185 views
Black War Heroes or Whites Save the Queens?
After Black Cavalry successfully captured White princesses,
White empire learns their Black opponent is hungry for more and wants White Twin Queens dead!
White will never let such a disaster happen ...
6
votes
1answer
340 views
Whites capture whites and Blacks capture blacks
This is my first Chess Puzzle!
Let suppose you start a Chess game.
Whites' aim will be to place all their alive pieces on white squares in a minimum of moves and black will do the same, but with ...
15
votes
3answers
891 views
Four fanatics and one checkerboard
Four checkers-playing fanatics eagerly
pair up for two simultaneous games of checkers
but somehow find themselves with just one board.
They do have enough checkers for two games, so it is time to act.
...
7
votes
2answers
768 views
Knights and Queen puzzle
This is not original. I just want to share this problem. If you have heard of it, please give opportunities for those who haven't to answer.
Horst and Queenie are playing a game on a $200\times200$ ...
1
vote
1answer
74 views
k-threats Chinese Cannons Chess: Part 2
Inspired from the N-Queens problem, I here propose you a puzzle from Xiangqi wich is Chinese Chess equivalent, mostly played in Asia.
The most different piece from Xiangqi is the cannon. You can ...
4
votes
1answer
95 views
k-threats Chinese Cannons Chess: Part 1
Inspired from the N-Queens problem, I here propose you a puzzle from Xiangqi wich is Chinese Chess equivalent, mostly played in Asia.
The most different piece from Xiangqi is the cannon. You can ...
6
votes
1answer
143 views
Most moves by Most number of Pieces
Using one color, White or Black, place as many chess pieces (kings, queens, bishops, knights, rooks, and pawns, or combinations thereof) as you can on a checkerboard so that when the number of pieces ...
18
votes
2answers
2k views
Playing with one Queen on a chessboard
Alice and Bob play a special chess game with alternate moves. Alics starts with an empty chessboard and puts a Queen at a field in the first row (A8-H8) or the right column (H1-H8). Now Bob is moving ...
12
votes
3answers
1k views
How many chess pieces do we have to put at least?
In a $8\times8$ chessboard, a cell is qualified if an adjacent cell (a cell which is on top, left, below, or right of the cell) excluding itself has a chess piece on it. How many chess pieces do we ...
20
votes
3answers
3k views
A chess board with numbers
A 8x8 chess board is marked with the numbers from 1 to 64 sequentially from left to right, row by row and top to bottom.
Now a minus sign is added to 32 of those numbers such that in each row and in ...
17
votes
4answers
2k views
Paint 21 Squares of a 7×7 Board Without Forming a Rectangle
Got a nice puzzle from my friend, when he was competing in IWYMIC/IMC 2011.
Paint $21$ of the $49$ squares of a $7 \times 7$ board so that no four painted squares form the four corners of a rectangle....
6
votes
3answers
886 views
Cover 63 squares of a chess board, differently
In this other puzzle, ThomasL asks for three similar pieces which can be arranged to exactly cover all of an 8x8 chessboard, except for a single square — for any of the 64 possible single squares.
I ...
45
votes
3answers
5k views
Cover 63 squares of a chess board
Can you find 3 similar geometrical figures (common shape but can be different sizes) A, B and C with the following property:
If you remove any square from a 8x8 chess board, then the remaining area ...
14
votes
3answers
455 views
A missing part of a checkerboard
Fill out the missing part (the grey area) and explain the pattern behind the colors of this $9 \times 9$ checkerboard tiles!
7
votes
3answers
1k views
A Plethora of Puzzled Pawns
Inspired by this question
According to FIDE rules,
the pawn may move to a square occupied by an opponent’s piece diagonally in front of it on an adjacent file, capturing that piece.
So, what's in ...
4
votes
1answer
481 views
How to connect a chessboard and a cipher into puzzle?
Let's say you have (a) a chessboard with figures and (b) a text from a book. The figures configuration is the Cardan grille, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardan_grille
When you put the chessboard ...
9
votes
2answers
455 views
Minimum number of turns to capture all pieces in Checkers
On an 8x8 checkerboard, there are 12 red kings and 1 black king. The kings behave as they would in any normal game of checkers, being able to move in any diagonal direction one space and jump any ...
15
votes
1answer
1k views
Chess problem: Make a crossword in 3 moves
A crossword position is a legal chess position with the following property: The board can be thought of as a crossword grid where the pieces on board work as clues. Each type of piece is a clue for ...
8
votes
2answers
746 views
Walk a Crooked Path
Here is a $7\times7$ board with three squares removed.
You walk a path from square to square (adjacent horizontally or vertically), without visiting any square more than once. What is the most ...
7
votes
1answer
895 views
Knight's Tour on a 7x7 Board starting from D5
Average Knight's Tour puzzle but this time on a 7x7 and starting from D5
12
votes
4answers
594 views
What’s the most possible checkmates in one, but with no promoted pieces, in a position?
What is the most possible checkmates in one without promoted units in a position? It must all be legal, of course. Promotions are allowed in the game, but the position is not allowed to start with ...
6
votes
2answers
803 views
Chess with symmetric move-square
Every move in chess involves moving a piece to a square. Let us call this square the "move-square" for that turn.
In the following, the move-square of the black player must be symmetrical (over the ...
0
votes
1answer
220 views
Fastest Way To 6 Pawns On the B To H Files
MASSIVE UPDATE: I decided to play around with this again today, and I found MAJOR improvmemts for the B to G file games. See if you can beat me! If not, give proof as to why my game is optimal (To ...
