de-lar i was busy typing my congratulatory note to you while you were busy typing 'i solved it' :)
A ALMOST IMPOSIBLE PUZZLE
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And loomis had his little joke at my expense :)
- he said only 3 pawns have moved --- yeah sure and one of them moved straight from its original square into the electronic box where captured pices go ;)
normajeanyates, I'm sorry, I just reread my post and realized it could be misleading. What I meant to say is that only 3 black pawns were off their original squares, so if there were 4 pawn moves then at least one pawn moved twice.
Loomis you should not re-read your posts imo - i liked that joke very much :)
De Lar you'll find lots of them at the 'retrograde analysis corner' - i posted the link before in this thread - here it is again:
http://www.janko.at/Retros/index.htm
Now I must log-off and solve a similar one ['white has just made his 7th move. Reconstruct the game.'] on www.ficgs.com -> problems -> 'play this game!' ... having learnt my lesson, I am going to print that one out and solve it in silence and solitude!
By the way, the second puzzle (1. e4 e6 2. Bb5 Ke7 3. Bxd7 c6 4. Be8 Kxe8) was composed by T.Orban, and first appeared in Die Schwalbe in 1976. It is one of the toughest retrograde puzzles in 5 full moves or less, along with the following:
"A game starts with 1.e4 and ends on move 5 when a knight takes a rook and delivers mate. What was the game?"
When I found this puzzle, a bynote read "Anyone who [didn't know the puzzle beforehand and] can solve this puzzle in less than 24 hours should be appreciated".
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Who composed this puzzle, and where did it first appear??
Thanks, Kornrade, I was disappointed that I didn't know who to credit with that problem.
Yes, after racking my head over this one [and failing] the one i was trying on another site felt almost trivial ...
re the puzzle under discussion [Orban, via Loomis]:
"hindsight has 20/20 vision" - so, having seen the solution, I see that it is an easy puzzle ;)
Argument: The diagram shows that black has moved two pawns [at least]. That leaves 2 more moves to spare for black. But nothing else is out of place, except a missing d-pawn. So :
a) those two moves must have been a piece moving and returning.
b) The d-pawn must have captured on its original (d7) square.
Captured by what? Obviously the white bishop. The solution easily follows.
WOW! At the very beginning I fleetingly thought of triangulation but ruled it out - no space i thought!
GREAT puzzle!
Congrats Loomis for posting; and bigger congrats De-Lar for cracking it!
two pawn moves; B captures the d-P on its *original* square creating space for the black K to triangulate, and thus increasing 3.5 to 4 ! Brilliant!