Another retro original

Composing is tough. Here's a take on an old idea.

Legal?

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White has a sacrificial army,  2 Knight are missing and 2 Bishops are missing However if white can begin I suppose white KING can take out Bb8 ,,,a7 and b6    In Chess 960 the chess pieces are all over the board in ridiculous positions but all pieces are accounted for. It sharpens yr wits playing 960 This game MAY have been a legit 2 piece FULL armies but is it possible that NO BLACK pieces have been eliminated.Hey did youy get the FREE diamond membership for explaining to us all what 1-1 is    SEEMS its right down yr alley

wBf1 and Ra1 are caged, so the 2N had to sac on b6/f6. In the retroplay, white has only 3 tempi to burn before he's out of moves. His 8th rank pieces are hopelessly buried; there is no way to get them out in only 3 moves. The only hope is the caged piece that has a move.

-1...Nb5 -2.a2 Na3 -3.c3 Nb1 -4.c2 Na3xR etc.

Solved. The last 6 half-moves are unique (-4...Na3/c3xR is ambiguous.)

The other, easier bit to see is getting the white king home, left as an exercise. If you can see the caged R uncapture then there's no challenge here, but it's good practice for the inexperienced.

Not true. He could have come in via d6-c7.

Remellion was still around recently but most of the other guys left before I joined as well.

J'suis là !

I haven't done retros for a while since my attention was captured by atomic chess and by studies (real life). Still popping in from time to time though.

@Remellion: Salut! You guys were so active back in the day. There must be 100 original retro problems here. There was even a retro group. Did they all take up atomic chess & real life studies?

I only speak for myself; what the others are doing now is their choice. We weren't really organised either. cobra71 and shoopi were active in an earlier thread (and their later work is very professional indeed). I was active only later in another thread, and we did have some other threads around for composing/solving. There were also many random threads around the forum started by others (some of which got deleted) where we tossed stuff up... Good times.

Still surprised that you and Arisktotle are here though, big names in retros (and the problem world, in general).

@Remellion: well that's kind although I think Arisktotle is the real star. He is one of my top favourite composers and it's an honour to hang out with him here, even though I express disagreement with him sometimes. The other reason I am here is that I want to figure out to make retro problems more popular at a grass roots level somehow, so I am keen to read the threads, make contact with the participants. How are they are thinking? What kinds of problems work for them and what kinds don't? Etc. And it's also a friendly place here without much trolling. The absence of "like" buttons has perhaps got something to do with it. And I have got into the tactics exercises: I might even play a real game of chess again one day

ok here is a solution in 62 moves, but of course many were useless, i just played this way to make my life easier.... but what's the lowest possible number of moves to reach that position?

(1. h4 Nh6 2. Nf3 Ng4 3. Ne5 Nh2 4. Ng4 Nxf1
5. Nf6+ exf6 6. Nc3 Ng3 7. Na4 Nf5 8. Nb6 cxb6
9. Rh3 Nh6 10. Ra3 Ng8 11. Kf1 Nh6 12. Kg1 Ng8
13. Kh2 Nh6 14. Kg3 Ng8 15. Kf3 Nc6 16. Ke3 Ne5
17. Kd4 Ng6 18. Kd5 Qe7 19. Qh1 Qe3 20. Qh3 Qh6
21. Re3+ N6e7+ 22. Kd6 Qg6 23. Kc7 d6 24. Qg3 Bd7
25. Qh3 Rd8 26. Qg3 Bc8 27. Kb8 Rd7 28. Ra3 Nc6+
29. Ka8 Be7 30. Qh3 Bd8 31. Qg3 Bc7 32. Qh3 Bb8
33. Qg3 Ke7 34. Qh3 Nh6 35. Qg3 Rhd8 36. Qh3 Na5
37. Qg3 Ke6 38. Qh3+ Kd5 39. Qg3 Qe4 40. Qh3 Qe8
41. Qe3 Qh8 42. Qe8 Nf5 43. Qg8 Nd4 44. Re3 Nb5
45. Re8 Re7 46. Rf8 Rdd7 47. Re8 Bc7 48. Rf8 Bd8
49. Re8 Nc7+ 50. Kb8 Ke6 51. Rb1 Nc4 52. Ra1 Na3
53. Rf8 Ne8 54. Ka8 Bc7 55. Rb1 Bb8 56. Ra1 Rd8
57. Rb1 Red7 58. Ra1 Ke7 59. Rb1 Nxb1 60. c3 Na3
61. c4 Nb5 62. a3 Nbc7+)