clarification needed - "she WAS captured" - what does it mean? if Q was captured, how can it be on board - does it reference the capture of opposite Q?
Deductive Puzzle #11
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hahaha. good catch. She refers to the other queen. I will re-edit the post :p
May 26, 2009
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#4
Consider which piece was taken on c3. Since no pawn has made more than one capture, it was either Black's Queen or another Black piece which has since been replaced by a promoted e-pawn. If it was, indeed, the Queen which was captured, then it makes the Queen on h5 belong to White.
Consider, now, the possibility that the e-pawn promoted. Since it only could have captured once, that means it has to have promoted on d1 as it had to have made a capture to get onto the d-file. Which White pieces are missing? No White pawns are missing, so every piece White owns is an original. Thus, the pawn could only have captured either the Queen or the light-squared Bishop.
If it was the Queen which was captured by the e-pawn on its way to promotion, then clearly the Queen on h5 is Black. The pawn could have promoted to a Knight and escaped via e3 prior to the e3 pawn advance, in which case one of Black's Knights was captured on c3 to open up the d-file for the e-pawn's promotion. It also could have promoted to a Rook, in which case, it was one of Black's Rooks which was captured on c3.
Could the e-pawn have captured the light-squared White Bishop on its way to promotion on the d-file? If this is the case, then both dxc3 and e3 would have had to have been made prior to the promotion, in which case, how did the White Knight make it to d1 after the promotion of the Black e-pawn? Thus, the Black pawn MUST have captured the White Queen on it's way to promotion.
Thus, if a Queen was captured on c3, then it was a Black Queen and the remaining Queen is White's. If some other piece was captured on c3, then White's Queen was captured on the d-file, and the remaining Queen is Black's.
For todays puzzle, there is a Queen placed on h5, of unknown color.
The following information is known. She is not promoted, but in-fact original, and no pawn has captured more than once piece.
You do NOT need to prove which color the remaining queen is. Rather you need to prove that her color is dependent on whether the missing queen was captured on her own file or not.