Monday, December 27, 2010

The twelve puzzles of Xmas


Kirillov and Selivanov, 1997

Mate in three

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

1.Qa8 threats 2.g3# 2.g4#
1..Bg3 2.Rf1 B~ 3.g3# or g4#
1..Bxg1 2.Qf3 Kh2 3.Qh3#

Anonymous said...

sorry,
1.Qa8
others as above
1..Be5+ 2.Bd4 Kh2 3.Bxe5#

Anonymous said...

Guessed the key move instantly! Do I detect a pattern emerging?

PG

ejh said...

Nope - 1.Qa8 Bg3 2.Rf1 Be5+

Anonymous said...

Qg8 looks good.

1...Bg3 2. Bf2+
1...Bxg1 Qg4
1... Bb8,c7,d6,e5,f4,g3 2. Ba7+/b6+/c5+/d4+/e3+/f2+

Richard

ejh said...

Pattern? There's always a pattern.

Richard has it. Puzzle originally from Zheltonozhko - or at least I think so, though I don't understand what the 65 JT refers to, as given in Juraj Lörinc: Chess Composition Microweb, Andrej V Selivanov.

HeinzK said...

Jubilee Tournament. Someone was celibrating their birthday by sponsoring a composition tournament. That's more or less how it works

ejh said...

Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Pattern. I mean mate in 1, mate in 2, mate in 3. Looking forward to mate in twelve. Sort of.

PG

ejh said...

Oh yes, I understood that! What I was saying is, every year there's a pattern, it's just that until now, nobody seems to have mentioned it...

Anonymous said...

Maybe because no-one noticed it?Looking at last years puzzles I can't detect a pattern at all. Do tell.

PG

ejh said...

No, no telling! But it's there if people look hard enough.

Anonymous said...

Go on, I'll have a stab at the 09-10 pattern. Alternating White/black-square key moves? (but admittedly this breaks down at puzzle 10 where it goes black-black)

ejh said...

I'm not even sure what that means, but it's not the answer...

Martin Smith said...

Another comment under the radar to continue my experiment of applying Levitt and Friedgood's aesthetic criteria or "elements" to ejh's selection of puzzles.
I mentioned Geometry and Paradox in #1 and #2. The other two are Flow and Depth which we'll come back to when they seem to apply.
Here I think it's another case of Geometry - in the way the white bishop tracks its black counterpart up the diagonal to stop it interfering with the action of the rook.