Queen's Tour

"Maneuver a queen about an otherwise unoccupied chess board in such a way that it lands on every square once and only once.   The queen may not pass through a previously occupied square."  -- from the Chess Tours PDF that you'll find here.

It's kind of difficult to create a challenging queen's tour puzzle.  Here's the hardest one I've come up with to date (fill in the blanks):

I'll post a solution in a couple of days.

A solution is now below.

What's the point?

That's a question that can be asked of anything.  Many people don't see a point to chess.  That's OK, I reckon.

Here's a solution:

?????what?????????????????????whatttttttttttt???????????wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaatttttttttt?

I don't know for sure what the "whats" are about.  The queen's tour and the more interesting bishop's tour and rook's tour are derived from the famous knight's tour.  The knight's tour is all over the internet... see for example wikipedia.

To make a challenging tour puzzle for the queen, bishop, or rook, there needs to be an additional rule.  The rule I came up with is that the piece cannot cross over a previously occupied square.  Additionally, there should be some "assigned squares" so the solver can't just "snake" the piece around the board. 

As for the above diagram, the queen begins on g8 and moves to f8.  That's why g8 is marked with a "1" and f8 is marked with a "2."  She then goes to d8, skipping over e8 because e8 was assigned to be square #43.  (It's OK for the queen to cross over e8 at this point because it won't be occupied until it's time for the number 43.)

Does that help?

What do you do then? I beg of you to believe me, I am not questioning your creativity and over all application to all this but it seems to me to be rather akin to lining up 999,000 dominos and pushing the last one over and watching the end result.

I guess you're asking about the usefulness of this to chess.  It does have some value...   not as much as studying openings, endgames, strategy and tactics, but some value none-the-less.

Mainly, I think it helps with sequential planning (first, I should do this, then that, then...).  Secondarily, I find solving a tour to be a bit of a confidence builder. 

But it should be understood to be primarily a diversion (nothing wrong with that).  If a chessplayer wants to take a break but still move pieces, here's something.

Retrograde analyisis (a topic that surfaces here every now and then) is also primarily a diversion, although it does help to some extent to sharpen one's chess skills.