Where was the white king originally?

C2?

The bishop couldn't have moved to that position with the rook there without a piece in the way

And it cant be b3 because both black pieces attack the square

Wait no

It cant be c2 lol

@mantine

Right so far.

 knocked off their king????? Hä?

And the white King was origially on e1......

Had me going  there for a minute.

Had going to pee and smoke a cigarette?

This is an incredibly hard puzzle, good luck trying to solve it.

I've seen it before, but I don't think it took me more than five minutes. I wouldn't call it incredibly hard.

Still a nice puzzle.

I looked up the answer... a little disappointed I didn't think of that, because I've thought up similar puzzles on my own... at the end of the day it seems I'm always cursed to fail any puzzle involving retro analysis lol.

But yeah, IMO it's hard... I'm sure someone can solve it, but not me.

for me, it´s ridicolous. And what does it mean: It WAS black to move? When? Two hours ago? when it IS black to move it is clear, that white had the last move. If it is not allowed for a piece to step out the board of it´s own (yuck), then whites last move must be with the white bishop who kicked out the own king. If it meant, last move was black´s move than we just don´t know nothing... Is it allowed to stay in check? Or is it allowed to move into check? If last, the black king put off the white king on d1. If it is allowed to stay in check as long as you want (yuck), the white King could have been on b5 or d5..... what a mess.

It was Black to move when the king was knocked off the board. Seems clear enough.

Nothing sneaky about the puzzle.

Pretend the white king was on g3, ok so we put the king back on g3 and it's black to move.

But wait, what was white's last move? Was it Kg2-g3? No, it couldn't have been, because it's illegal for it to be white's move AND the black king is in check.

Ok, so with the king on g3 white's last move must have been the bishop on a4 had to move from somewhere and give check... but the only squares it could have come from are b3 and c2... and it couldn't have come from there because the black king would still be in check.

So the answer definitely isn't Kg3.

(not allowed to stay in check, move into check, move off the board, or anything illegal like that... if you want to think of the puzzle another way, try to reach this position from the starting position. If you can do that, then wherever the white king ends up you've probably solved it)

The "sneaky" thing is this is a retrograde analysis puzzle i.e. you have to figure out what the last few move(s) were to solve it.

By "nothing sneaky" I meant nothing like, "the king was on a2 and it pushed the bishop feom a3 to a4 when it fell off the board".

Oh, I misunderstood, sorry about that.

I agree that "it WAS Black's turn to move" is a very unfortunate phrasing of words. Replace it with "is" and everything is clear.