Friday 20 May 2016

Not a perfect puzzle

Here is a somewhat strange chess puzzle. It is White to play but Black to win. The question is why? And as an additional challenge, can you name some of the pieces?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this the position from the Philosopher's Stone movie?

Nye Griffiths said...

I may have completely missed white's best defensive move but on the basis that there is an immediate threat of Nh3# I came up with an initial list of candidate moves for white which stop immediate mate (Qg4, Qd3, h3, Nf3, Nf5, Ng6+) however it looks like all the moves which stop the initial threat of Nh3# fail to stop the following threat of c2 then promotion of Charlie the c pawn. I just thought that Qf1 may work but it also fails to Rxf1, Rxf1, Nh3# or Kxf1 c2. Ng2 also loses to Nh3+ then after Kh1 he can fork the Queen on f2 then promote Charlie.

I don't think any ideas of Qg4 or Qd3 followed by Ng6+ or Re1 work for white either. Black just queens Charlie and wins.

Nye Griffiths said...

PS: I'm sure that's what you meant by "naming the pieces" :)

Nye Griffiths said...

Fark I set the board up wrong with white's D pawn as a C pawn hahahahah. Ignore above post. Wasted an hour of my life :D

Nye Griffiths said...

Black's pawn not White's - bah I give up!

Anonymous said...

So you gonna give us the answer, Shaun? AO

Shaun Press said...

The first poster was correct. It is from Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, and some of the pieces are Harry, Ron and Hermione (sorry Nye!)