Where is the pawn? December 31, 2004
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The year is ending – it already has, as we post this, in South-East Asia, where we have been witness to one of the greatest natural disaster in recorded history. Our feelings are with the victims, whose number is rising each day. It is a sobering thought that if we had installed one tenth of the technology the TV stations are using to bring us each harrowing detail of the Tsunami disaster into a Tsunami warning system, then tens of thousands of lives might have been saved.

But life goes on, and on this New Year's Eve we have two puzzles, one the final proof game supplied to us by John Nunn, and the other, which you have hopefully not seen before, an amazing little problem which shows us how ingenious composers can be.

Proof game 8: Position after Black’s tenth move

What is amazing about the last two examples (7 & 8) of our proof game series is that problems with so many moves can be devised which meet the requirements of the genre. Mainly that the position may be arrived at by only the one set of moves, and that the order of the moves must be unique. Which by the way is also a help in solving the puzzles. If you are working on a solution in which the order of two moves is irrelevant, then you know that this cannot be correct. For instance in the above position if you are trying 1.f3 d5 2.Kf2 g5 then you know you are on the wrong track because 1.f3 g5 2.Kf2 d5 would do just as well.

W. Pauly, 1913

White to play and mate in two (white pawn missing)

In the above position there is a white pawn missing. You are required to replace it and mate in two moves. We are not sure we should be telling you this, but there are four different solutions, each with its own little point.

As usual you can print out the two puzzles on this page and solve them on a chessboard.

Frederic Friedel