Deductive Puzzle #8

Ok, a good bit of information is given here beforehand. You already know the following: a) Black's Queen Rook was captured by a pawn. b) King's Bishop was given as odds for the game.

Knowing this, is is your job to deduce on what squares the two White rook's were captured upon, with the knowledge that they were captured in the same row.

By "captured in the same row" I presume you mean rank and not file?

Black's Queen Rook was captured by a pawn, and the only possible square for this to have happened is e3.

That means that the Black Queen and King both have to have made way for the rook to have gotten out on the king-side, so both have moved despite being back on their starting squares..

It was White's King-Bishop that was given as odds, obviously, as Black's is still on the board.

Right; black's king's bishop can't have been promoted because this would have had to have been done on a1 or c1, and there aren't enough pieces gone for one of black's missing pawns to get there.

Furthermore, either white's rooks were captued on the first rank, or they escaped from the first rank via the f-file, which means that the king must have gotten out of the way, (assuming that it's not the first rank)

Why can't one of them have been promoted on e1 or g1?

I think we need clarification on which Bishop was given as odds.

 Yeah, White's King could have moved, by castling or otherwise.

If it was promoted at e1 or g1, how did it make it back to g7?

It may have got back out before g2-g3 was played.

If it's Black's King-Bishop that was given as odds, that means that at least one White peice was captured by a Black pawn.

Black need not have moved his King and Queen, yet.  White may have let his Bishop be captured on b6, opening up the c-file for Black's queenside Rook to get out.  If this is the case, then something must have been captured on c6 also, and the only piece that could in that case is one of White's Rooks.

EDIT: Wait, no, that can't be the case.  Black's Bishop would not have been able to get out of c8 to let the Rook free.  Thus, the two black pawns on b6 and c6 are on their original files.  Unless, of course, Black's light-squared Bishop is a promoted one and the original one was captured on its original square.

Ahh, that rook could have gotten out via an exchange of files for Black's b and c pawns -- good catch.

Can we prove that one of the King or Queen haven't moved?

I will present that the black knight on f1 was either promoted or got there from e3 or g3 before the pawn on whichever square it came from was moved there.

IF the black king-side bishop is a promoted pawn, then it had to travel all the way down the f-file and capture on g1 (in order to be a dark-squared bishop). But white is missing only three pieces, and one of those is the light-squared bishop. So if the "odds" bishop was a black piece, then the promoting pawn had to capture a rook, and one answer is "g1". 

EDIT: Ooops - not so - the white queen-side bishop was also available to be  captured . . .

White is missing four peices, and one of them is the dark squared Bishop that could have been captured on e1 or g1, so I don't think we can say with certainty that a rook was captured on the first rank.

I think this might be key in demonstrating that the White Bishop was captured on its starting square, and as a result the White queen-side Rook could never have gotten out and was either captured on the first rank, or on b2.

This all assumes it was the Black king-side Bishop that was given as odds.

If we can demonstrate that the Black King or Queen haven't moved, we can account for two more captured White peices via the pawn-swap that allowed the rook to escape.

Both the Rook and the Bishop could have got out while the b file was opened and the pawns were doubled on the c-file -- before the capture on c3.

Sequence is important.  N got to f1 from either e3 or g3.

BR must have been captured at e3 (only possible pawn capture).

IF the f1 bishop got out, had to be through g2. But if you do the e3 pawn capture, and then move g2-g3, the N can't get to f1.

So the N has to get to f1 BEFORE at least one of the two pawn moves.  

Unless the bishop was captured on f1 by the Knight.