Sunday, January 02, 2011

The twelve puzzles of Xmas


Benko, 1998/9

Mate in nine


[Thanks to Martin]

4 comments:

Martin Smith said...

Phew! I feel a bit better for having got that down me. Some Flow, some Paradox, and a dash of Depth and Geometry. Nice and refreshing after the heavy weather of # 8. An Alka-Seltzer of a problem.

Anonymous said...

Lots of flow! 1. Rg6 Kh7 2. Rg4 Kh6 3. Kf2 Kh5 4. Kg3 Kh6 5. Kh4 Kh7 6. Kh5 Kh8 7. Kg6 Kg8 8. Rf4 Kh8 9. Rf8#.

Martin Smith said...

Yes, you're right Anon. More Flow than anything else.

That's what Alka-Seltzer can do for you..

ejh said...

And a nice uncluttered board, especially compared to the problems that sandwich it.

First publication as far as we can see was in Benko and Silman, My Life, Games and Compositions, Siles, 2003, p.588.

Martin located it there: it appears in a set of problems listed chronologically, the one before being from 1998 and the one after 1999. Hence the ambiguity in our listing.

Other problems in the list give details of publication - this gives none, which explains our assumption that the book with Silman saw its first actual publication.

I suppose we could have stated "Benko, 2003" but instead we have listed it with an approximate date of composition.