2011/07/26

THE INVISIBLE KING

This is a fascinating old problem. A mere glance at the below position is sufficient to detect that something is wrong with the position. Oh yes… THE WHITE KING IS MISSING.

WHERE IS THE WHITE KING?
But invisible to us, the white king is somewhere there on the chess board. The challenge is to locate the square. Not only that, you also have to find the final sequence of moves that led to this position.

Looks impossible !!! So let's do some logical thinking.

It is fairly easy to deduce that it’s Black’s turn to move. Black king is being checked by the white bishop & the white king cannot possibly be on b3 or c2.

But the problem is white could not have moved his bishop in his last move, as the only means of coming to a4 is either from c2 or b3, which would have put the black king on a check before the move. So the only possible conclusion is white’s last move was a king move. But since the white bishop is checking the black king right now, the only square white king could possibly have resided prior to the last move is b3. (c2 is impossible).

But if white moved his king from b3 as his last move, it is not clear how on earth black managed to give a double check prior to that.

All very mysterious ah… time to try your luck then. 

Please post your answers in the comments section below. Click here to check the solution.


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4 comments:

  1. black pawn on b4. white pawn on c2. black has done Bd5+ and white covers with c2-c4.

    bxc3++(en)and white continues with Kxc3+.

    TGM

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice one Gayan. No wonder your initials are GM !!

    ReplyDelete