White to play and achieve immortality in one December 30, 2003
Press Esc or click "Stop" on your browser to stop the music and "Refresh" to start it.

Today we are going to give you a position which is very famous, so many of you may have encountered it before. But it is worth repeating the story around it, especially since many details may not be generally known. They have been meticulously reconstructed by Jon Selman in the Dutch magazine Tijdschrift KNSB in 1940 and retold in Tim Krabbé's treasure trove Schaak Kuriosa (Amsterdam 1974, p.17ff).

London, 1875. William Norwood Potter, a very strong master, who had played matches with Steinitz, Zukertort (the latter won 8:6), Blackburne and MacDonnell, was playing odds games against an amateur named Fenton (no relative, one assumes, to yesterday's composer). In one of these games the following position arose:

Fenton – W.N.Potter, London, 1875

White to play

Fenton, who was winning, continued 1.Rxh3 Kxh3 2.Kc6 Rxa5 3.b7.

At this point Fenton's famous opponent offered a draw, which White respectfully accepted. We do not know what exactly the logic of the draw or acceptance was – Fenton must have at least seen 3...Ra6+ 4.Kb5 Ra1 and draw (5.b8Q?? Rb1+). It is also not clear what happened next. The most common story has Potter then showing Fenton how he could have won, while others tell of Zukertort finding the win and publishing it in The City of London Chess Magazine. The proper way to play was of course 3...Ra6+ 4.Kc5! Ra5+ 5.Kc4 Ra4+ 6.Kc3 Ra3+ 7.Kb2! 1-0.

After this, for twenty years, nothing happened. Then on March 13, 1895, William Norwood Potter died. The director of the chess column in the Scottish newspaper Weekly Citizen, G. E. Babier, dedicated an article to the great chess player. Babier, a poet and professor for French, had lived in London in 1875 and had either witnessed the Fenton-Potter game himself or read about it in Zukertort's column. Not remembering the game precisely he gave a modified version of the position.

G.E.Babier, Glasgow, Weekly Citizen, 1895

Black to play, White to win

According to Babier Potter had offered the draw, Fenton had accepted, and then Potter had shown him the win: 1...Rd6+ 2.Kb5 Rd5+ 3.Kb4 Rd4+ 4.Kb3 Rd3+ 5.Kc2 1-0.

The position appeared in the Weekly Citizen on April 27, 1895. But Babier continues playing around with the position and suddenly discovered that if the black king was on a1 there was a pretty draw for Black. He published this as a study in his next column a week later.

G. E. Babier, Glasgow, Weekly Citizen, 1895

Black to play and draw

The solution to Babier's study was 1...Rd6+ 2.Kb5 Rd5+ 3.Kb4 Rd4+ 4.Kb3 Rd3+ 5.Kc2 Rd4! Now the white pawn promotion draws: 6.c8Q Rc4+ 7.Qxc4, as do other tries: 6.Kb3 Rd3+; 6.Kc3 Rd1. So Black has saved the game.

Saavedra's move

The study appeared in the May 4th issue of the Weekly Citizen, and the solution in the next column on May 11. And this is where our hero enters. Fernando Saavedra, a Spanish priest in the Order of Passionists, had solved the study during the week of May 4–11. But then he studied the position again and a few days later went to the Glasgow Chess Club, where he met Babier. There he showed the editor what he had discovered: White can win by underpromoting to a rook on move six! Babier was so impressed that in his next column he published the above position one more time with the stipulation "Black to play, White to win" and giving the win that was pointed out to him by a member of his chess club: 6.c8R! Ra4 7.Kb3 and Black has no defence.

Saavedra had never before stood in the limelight. Apart from finding this move, 6.c8R!, he has done nothing worthy of mention in the chess world. As Tim Krabbé writes: "Saavedra was a mediocre chess player whose name, through chance, will live forever in chess literature." If it wasn't for this move the name would have been completely unknown today. Here is the final version of the study.

G.E.Babier/F.Saavedra, Glasgow, Weekly Citizen, 1895

White to play and win

The solution, as we know, is 1.c7 Rd6+ 2.Kb5 Rd5+ 3.Kb4 Rd4+ 4.Kb3 Rd3+ 5.Kc2 Rd4! 6.c8R!! Ra4 7.Kb3 1-0. The above position has probably been published more often than any other study in chess history.

The Saavedra manoeuvre has inspired many composers to create studies that culminate in the rook underpromotion. Here's our favourite, which we leave for you to solve. It was shown to us in the late eighties by former junior world champion Julio Kaplan who was in ecstasy because his chess program had been able to solve it.

A.A.Troitzky, Ceske Slovo, 1924

White to play and win

Frederic Friedel

Click here to see the solutions to all puzzles.

The page contains all the unsolved problems. It includes a link to a Javascript board on which you can can replay the moves of each solution and download the positions. On the Javascript page you will find all the positions quoted in our 2003 Christmas Puzzle section, including the ones for which solutions are already given in the text.

Tommy's Christmas Repton

"I don't know if the levels are getting easier or if I am just getting better at this game," wrote Conan LaPointe from Lorne, Canada. "I was actually able to complete level five on my first try. The only hard part seemed to be near the bottom left hand corner where there was a bunch of boulders with diamonds intraped in them. I simply removed them from the top and worked it out so that most fell off to the right at first then I went around to the other side and got the rest. Out of curiosity I went back to see if there was more than one solution. I think I'm getting addicted to this game. I might need to go to Reptonholics Anonymous, damn you, ChessBase!"

Well, welcome to the club of Reptophiles, Conan. Our biggest Repton addict hails from the west coast of India. However, Srinath of Pune does not agree with the chess analogy:

"I feel like a spaniel cocking up its ears in Enid Blyton novels whenever I hear someone compare a game with chess. 'Even experienced chess players will admit that it rivals their beloved game as a challenge to the human intellect,' you write (ears cock). I feel the two challenges are of totally different kinds, and cannot, and should not, be compared. I'm sure some level of skill is required in Repton, which is not comparable to the, say, endgame skills of a chess player. And both chess and Repton have timing constraints (although FIDE is trying its level best to make chess a lot tougher in that department). But I must say that the joy I, or any chess player, experiences on winning a tactical melee, or an outright positional fight, is beyond comparison. No other mental or any physical deeds can come close to that. I know the writer wasn't comparing chess and Repton, but nevertheless, I must say that Repton does not pose a threat to chess as the supreme challenge to human intellect."

You are probably right, Srinath. But wait till you see the advanced levels of Repton 3. Maybe you will see the similarity to complex chess problems more clearly.

"I love it when there are no monsters around," Srinath continues. "The monsters, for me, reduce the intellectual beauty of the game, and brings in the requirement of skill, to a small, but nevertheless necessary, amount. Maybe there's a fixed method to destroy a monster in each level, and I haven't been able to find one. For instance in level four ("Tim Tyler") I lost many lives before I took out the monster (who comes alive in the right corner after taking the fruit) by going all the way around to the other end, and killing it with the boulder on the bottom left-hand corner. Required timing and precision, which I disliked."

There always is a fairly sure-fire (repeatable) way to deal with the mosters. We get the one you mention into the situation shown on the right, which is quite easy to achieve.

After that you go up, move to the right and return to the original place as quickly as possible. Push the rock to squish the monster. Try it a couple of times and you will see it become very mechanical.

This kind of reproducable manoeuvre is important in the higer levels, where you may have to deal with such problems after solving three-quarters of a screen. You want to be able to do so reliably when you get there.

For Srinath and and others, who like the "purity" of monster-free puzzles, Tommy has quickly put together two small screens, which are included in the links below. They are simple, straightforward boxes, but not completely trivial to solve. They make no use of complicated creatures or items, but are simply a bunch of rocks and diamonds. Such screens are made using The Editor, which few people so far have discovered. Both Tommy's Christmas Repton as well as the full Superior version have powerful editors. Anyone who creates an interesting screen should send it in for evaluation.

Links

• Download the sixth level of Repton
  Download the above file, repton1.rep, and save it in the subdirectory Christmas Repton\data\maps\, overwriting the previous repton1.rep file there. The new file contains all the levels published so far. Each can be accessed either by solving the previous level or by entering the password you get when you solve any level (click File – Enter password).

• Download Tommy's Christmas Repton here
  If you have not started to play the game yet you can download the whole game (134 KB) and follow the instructions given at the bottom of our Chistmas Day page. Note that this contains all levels released so far, so you don't have to retrieve the above file to upgrade.

• Download puzzle boxes
  The file maps.zip contains the two boxes Tommy generated. They should be copied into the subdirectory Christmas Repton\data\maps\ (as with repton1.rep above). Use "File – Load map" to start them. No passwords are required.

The latest Repton game is available from the Superior Interactive site. Click on the logo on the right to download a trial version. For $19.95 you can get a key that upgrades it to the full version. You may also want to try the PDA and cell-phone versions of Repton from Masabi. The Superior site also has the games Galaforce and Ravenskull.

We will be providing new levels for Tommy's Christmas Repton on a daily basis until the end of our Christmas Puzzle week. Superior has donated three dual prizes of Galaforce Worlds and Ravenskull. They will be for the best comments we receive on our Christmas Repton. For the chess puzzles we will be giving away a copy of Fritz autographed by Garry Kasparov.