Chess Detective 1: The Missing Officers

Position after White's 8th move. It looks like some pawns moved forward to let some officers out, who all captured one another! But what really happened? What's the *exact* sequence of moves in the game? Look carefully for clues at the scene of the crime (i.e. the diagram).

Correct! Bravo. But honest you have to admid that the moves are not all lets say optimal moves right?

So then for me rise the question what is the fun of it? Or what is it worth?

A puzzel nothing more and also not easy to find. But still for me this also counts.

I have made some problems or puzzels too. Some of my early ones have more then one solution. So called cooks. I consider them as incorrect then. An example of one early study is this.

White  Kf2 Qh7 N on e1 and e8

Black Kd5 Q on c8 R on g1 and pawn on g2.

White plays and wins.

The solution that I ment was.

@Ruben. Thanks for your post.

Suppose that your left foot and right foot were always fighting one another, and had different ideas of where they wanted to go. You wouldn't be able to go anywhere interesting, like climbing mountains. Indeed you probably couldn't even walk across the room.

So it is with chess problems. Since the 19th century, people have been making help mates, where the two players co-operate to achieve artistic effects that can't be achieved with direct mates or studies. As the retro sphere has grown, the proof game genre was invented, which allows, through the small condition of knowing the total number of moves, incredible precision and control over the exact history of the game.

You may not find retro problems fun, but many do. And certainly it has no more and no less worth than regular chess. There's a great idea from the collectable card game Magic the Gathering, which seems slow to penetrate the chess community although it's extremely relevant here. This is to identify player archetypes. One kind of player is called Spike. This is the one who just wants to win the game all the time. Everything is pointless unless it leads to that end. This is fine, except it's not the only archetype: another one is Johnny, who likes to build interesting combinations, just for the sake of seeing cool effects. Winning & losing is irrelevant to Johnny.

Johnnies can be competitive: trying to build the coolest or the biggest or the most economical displays. Sir Jeremy Morse was the famous inspiration for the fictional detective, Inspector Morse.  He wrote the classic "Chess Problems: Tasks & Records" which is an encyclopaedia of the most spectacular effects achieved in the (non-retro) chess problem world.

The problem I gave here is a toy example for someone to learn with. If I posted one of the more complicated ones it would be too frightening. But it still has its own artistic merit. It shows the theme of "hidden castling" in the most economical form possible. There are no doubled pawns, and all the surviving officers are back on their home squares. If you manage to achieve hidden castling in even one single move shorter, then that will be the new record and my hat will be off to you.

Hi Anselan, intereting view.  I must think about this.

I any case in Competition chess I am more a Spike then a Johny and I like winning and I am competative.  But on the other hand the beauty and ecstatic element in chess is also  appealing to me! Winning on an only but very difficult to find and very beautiful and interesting way with an idea that is very Original speaks of course to the imaganation! So I am very curious to what you are talking about.

And I would like to see something you can show me about this hidden Castles.

@texaspete: yes that's the solution! Great well done!

@Ruben: hidden castling is just one of a whole slew of tricks that composers feature. I was looking for another one to post for you but I got distracted by a superb problem which shows kind of the *opposite* to hidden castling. And some other tricks as well. I have posted it as Chess Detective 2 (hopefully better than True Detective 2 ).