Find a legal game that reaches this position after Black's 26th move.
Proof Game in 26 moves
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This is a tough one. The closest I can get so far is a 30.0 which I won't even show here. I think I'm more or less sure of several things:
- Black has made at least 25 ply regardless of if he castled. One. Spare. Ply.
- White has sacced 10 men in that a3-a6-d6 triangle, and figuring out what goes where is killing me.
- White may have castled long.
- Very likely e3 (and therefore Ba6?) came after Bc5*f2.
- No hard evidence but I'm convinced white promoted something and it didn't die (no time). Pronkin queen?
Anybody else has thoughts?
Still no bananas. A plantain, maybe.
I am benightedly close here. 26.5 moves. I extended the retroanalysis further and deduced that black's extra ply must be either ...Nc6/Na6 (get it captured) or ...g5 (hxg5 enabled, and ...h5 can be played.) In the former, wPh2-h4-h5-h6xg7 must be played before bPh5; in the latter, some magical trickery I'm unaware of removes the bNb8 which I think is impossible.
Also assuming the wQd1 is promoted, it must've spent a minimum of 2 ply to fly from g8-g4-d1, before bRf3 or wPg4 were played. Accounting for white's pieces currently on the board, they made 11 ply total (without castling), leaving 15 ply for that blasted triangle to be arranged. Some trial and error later, the 26.5 move game came out; I'm still working on dropping it another half-move.
Got it. At last. I don't know why but that was considerably more irritating than the last few.
Well, I have to admit to one count of not-quite retroanalysis. I found a 26.5 solution (which has many variants.) So it stands to reason that 26.0 has some trick to it, and ideally is unique. (SPGs should be unique.) Therefore, all the positions I reach must have unique move sequences.
Trivial and unrelated though this might sound, that is actually a weapon I used to solve the puzzle. I spent ages looking at 19. Ra5 to see how the h-file conundrum could be resolved. After much failure, I noticed 19. Rb5 and asked "what is the difference between 19. Ra5 and Rb5?" The ability to take bPc6xb5xa4 of course, and then I knew that that must be the right move because it enables more possibilities. The solution quickly followed.