possible or impossible?

Regarding puzzle 3#, any further progress on that one?

Switching the rooks isn't easy. For this particular maneuver, you need to find a way to block the white rook from checking the black king. But how can this be done? does white have any piece that can interfere with that check?

I give up. No use posting half-hearted solutions. I  guess its ur turn shoopi...

Alright. The really tricky trick is to use the white king in order to switch up the rooks - white rook getting to e2 (you need the white king to prevent the rook from checking the black king), then the black rook gets behind it, then the white rook gets back and viola! the switch is complete. Proof game below (watch move 51 onward for the critical maneuver):

New positions coming up.

First one is a composition by einstein_69101, second one is a composition by myself. Possible or impossible?

Second one is impossible. How could 2 rooks be on the 1st rank adjacent?

Yeah, but that's not the final position expressed in the puzzle originally, so still impossible.

Puzzle 2 is indeed impossible see position below

After Black plays gxh2 in that setup (the only way to get a promoted Rook on g1, White is stuck: no pawns can be pushed to alter the position and the remaining piece is pinned. Now bite me and prove me wrong as always

Hm... What if there was another knight on f1, like this:

Yes but in order for the c7-pawn to reach h2 White had to sacrifice 5 mens (excluding Bishops since they could never get out of that pawn formation), two Rooks, a Queen, a Knight and the h-pawn. I would liked a scenario like this however...

Correct, solved!

Still awaiting sentence for the second puzzle... good luck.

Congratulations to both of you!

More positions coming up.

which of these positions is legal? (composed by cobra91):

here's another one, black can still castle on both sides but that doesn't really matter

is it too hard or is it too easy that nobody wants to answer?

Not many people are active in this thread, and those that are aren't always here. Give it time.

Anyway, thanks for contributing for the thread. I'll give your position a shot.

Alright here's the analysis:

Black has promoted all of his pawns. In order to achieve that, he must have made a minimum of 6 captures with his pawns. White is missing exactly 6 pieces, so all of them must have been captured.

This means that black's a, b, g, and h pawns couldn't have captured a piece on the way to promotion. Here I had to think about it, but it is possible thanks to black's missing bishops.

What's nice about this position is the symmetry, as play is basically the same on both wings.

you're right Shoopi!

here´s the answer without promotion:

That's true.

Funny that both of our solutions took exactly 60 moves to complete

I know it can be done in less, but the question is, how much less? what is the least amount of moves necessary to reach this position?

This might be a new fun challenge to work on (by the way, the problems I posted on 163# are still up for solving )