Puzzles

Puzzle week 49

This is the last puzzle in this series. We will announce the winners in a festive manner on Tuesday, January 2, 2024.We will soon publish Shah Mata's Christmas and New Year puzzle. The winners will also be announced on January 2.

The assignment for this week is: Take all 16 pawns from the chess box and place them on the chess board so that there are no three or more pawns on a straight line. By straight line we mean horizontal, vertical and diagonal.

Good luck everyone!

Puzzle week 48
Three cycling Shamatans

Three cycling chess players, Bram, René and Giliam, are on their way to the Aldenkamp on Tuesday for their weekly chess evening. At a certain point in time their mutual position is as follows:
Bram rides a certain distance behind Giliam and René rides twice that distance in front of Giliam. They each cycle at their own constant speed. Bram passes Giliam after seven minutes and passes
René 5 minutes later . After how many minutes after Bram does Giliam pass René ?

There will be one more puzzle next week and on Tuesday January 2, 2024 we will have the festive announcement of the winners.
Good luck everyone!

Puzzle week 47

Changing knights  

The assignment is: Swap the knights, white up and black down using the usual knight move. Take turns. In exceptional cases, two moves may be made in succession, if desired.

Is the knight change possible and if so in how many moves?

Good luck everyone!

Puzzle week 46

Puzzle with Pawns

The pawn is an important piece in chess. The Frenchman François Philidor , after whom an opening is named, already made the statement in the eighteenth century that the pawn is
the soul of chess. The pawn often plays an important role together with the die in games on a square board. Think of Man Don't Annoy You, Board of Goose or Monopoly.
We present a pawn puzzle with the following rules:
1. One pawn, white or black, is placed on each square.
2. There may not be more than two of the same pawns directly next to each other (horizontally) or directly below each other (vertically).
3. Each row and column must contain the same number of white and black pawns.
4. Each row is unique and each column is unique. However, any row may be filled in the same way as any column.
This puzzle has a unique solution.
Good luck everyone

Puzzle week 45

The Knight jump

You can start the knights jump wherever you want. You may only use each square once.

Try to find the text with your  jumps. Hint: Shah Mata has them too!

Puzzle week 44

A switching trick on the chessboard

We have a board of 4 by 5 squares with four white and four black bishops.

The assignment is:

White and black must exchange places in as few moves as possible without the bishops threatening each. So capture  is not  possible.  Two questions.

1. Can this problem be solved?
2. And if so, in how many moves?

Good luck everyone!

Puzzle week 43

Can chess players count well?

This week a classic, a problem that is as old as the first chessboard drawn in the sand.

Over the past centuries, many have solved this problem. The question is how many rectangles does a chessboard (of 8 x 8 squares) contain and how many of them are squares? You can first practice with a board of 3 x 3 squares If your result here is 36 rectangles, of which 14 are squares, then you are on the right track!

Good luck everyone!

Puzzle week 42

Solving Indian problems

Our thoughts are first with Dik van der Pluijm. Last Tuesday at the end of our club evening, Dik was still busy solving the previous puzzle. He enjoyed the puzzles a lot and he also liked to fool around. Unfortunately, we learned this week that Dik had had a cerebral infarction that night and was admitted to hospital. Let's hope everything turns out well with our Dik!

There are diehards who try to solve all the puzzles and there are participants who are not entirely enthusiastic about the variety of problems presented. To accommodate the latter, an interesting
chess problem this week. Various chess themes are involved. In one of the recent German chess magazines we came across the problem below. You can solve this problem in a flash with one of the
many chess monsters, but that is not the intention. It is more educational to solve the problem yourself.

White's turn

A hint: think about solving Indian problems!

The three questions are:
- What is the fewest number of moves in which white can mate?
- With which piece does white mate?
- How many moves did Black have just before Black was mated?

Good luck everyone!

Puzzle week 41

Can chess players really do math well?

It has been established many times that the arithmetic skills of (young) children appear to decline every year. We are falling on international lists. A recently taken measure is that the upcoming Cito test in our primary schools will pay more attention to reading, language and arithmetic and that the attention will no longer be paid to geography, biology and history. The new test is now called the progression test.

It is claimed that many (young) chess players are very good at arithmetic. But is this also true? We want to test this with the puzzle below. In addition to the eight pawns, the king is assisted by seven chess pieces. For convenience, we have numbered the squares of the seven pieces and the eight pawns consecutively.

The number 7 is very common, sometimes as a lucky number and sometimes as one of the religious numbers. The number 7 appears often in the Bible. In fairy tales we used to learn about the seven goats and the seven dwarfs. Or read Seven Languages in Seven Days by Gaston Dorren.

Assignment 1a

Using four sevens and arithmetic rules, create the numbers 1 to 15. The arithmetic rules are: multiplication, division, addition, subtraction and square roots. Taking square roots is a mathematical concept. In the sums, use may be made of the fact that the square root of 7x7 is 7. The square root of 7x7 is written as √ 7x7. That's all you need to know for the puzzle. For each number you must use the four sevens in the calculation.

Assignment 1 b

In chess, the strength of the king is not expressed in a value. A value has been set for all other chess pieces. Could we have given the king's square the highest number in this puzzle, in this case 16?

Good luck everyone!

Puzzle week 40

Unbelievable!

Every chess player experiences that he or she can mate in a beautiful way or is mated in a beautiful way. Sometimes you can't believe your own eyes. The task in this puzzle is: 

mate in 1

It is not easy, but you have to think carefully, or in other words, think out of the box. We have recently practiced this. Good luck everyone!

Puzzle week 39

Non-aggression pact

It also happens in chess that a non-aggression pact is agreed upon. In other words, they aim for a draw or agree on a draw. This simple puzzle is also about a non-aggression pact.                          

Take a small chessboard of 5 by 5 squares, a total of 25 squares. Now take all the chess pieces from your box except the pawns. These 16 chess pieces fit on the chess board. You must place the pieces on the board in such a way that the white pieces do not attack the black pieces and the black pieces do not attack the white ones.

Good luck everyone!

Puzzle week 38

I want to die

Every chess player has experienced it: overlooking the winning move and losing the game mercilessly. You want to crawl through the ground or through your chessboard. You've wanted to die.

An interesting question is whether you could crawl through a chessboard if you make a hole in it?

We present this to you as a puzzle.

Print an empty chess board on an A4 piece of paper. But you can also draw a square on A4 paper. As a size, stick to a chessboard of approximately 20 cm by 20 cm. This fits on the A4 sheet.

Cut out the chessboard.

Now make a hole in this chessboard. Every member of Shah Mata must be able to crawl through this hole without tearing the paper. Would you be able to do this? Don't say this is n't possible. Just think out of the box.

This is perhaps typically a puzzle for non-chess players. Maybe something for your partners, family, acquaintances or colleagues? Everyone can participate!

Puzzle week 37

Cheating (1)

As long as there have been games, cheating has been going on. This also applies to all mind sports. There was a big fuss in the chess world when Magnus Carlsen accused his American opponent Hans Niemann of cheating after losing a game to him. Carlsen did not want to play against Niemann anymore. It led to lawsuits. Fortunately, the parties recently came to their senses and buried the hatchet, partly because there was no evidence that Niemann had cheated behind the board in classic games. Carlsen wants to play against Niemann again and Niemann is welcome to play online again on Chess.com, the platform on which he had cheated in the past.

This puzzle is about cheating and you play Sherlock Holmes.

One of the eight pawns has been manipulated and electronics may be hidden in it. The suspicion is that this pawn should be slightly heavier or slightly lighter than the other seven pawns.

You have access to a classic scale. What is the minimum number of times Sherlock Holmes must weigh to find the cheating pawn?

Puzzle week 36

Known are the puzzles and exercises where you have to mate in one move, abbreviated Mate in 1. The diagram indicates whether it is white or black to move.

With the puzzle below we turn it around! White's move. With which move does white NOT mate in one move? Easy or difficult? Try it yourself! Illegal moves not allowed.