Problem of black and white January 1st, 2007
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Puzzle 8

“I saw a weird king and pawn ending at the club last night. The position was absolutely crazy.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me that you can’t remember the position.”

“Not at all. In fact I wrote it down.” He waved a piece of paper at me. When I looked at it, I saw that he had written letters on a chess diagram. There was a ‘K’ on g4 and g6, and a ‘P’ on c7, d6, d7, e4, e5, e6, e7, f3, f5, f6, f7, g7, h3, h5 and h7.

“It must have been crazy, but I can see one problem here.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t tell which pieces were white and which were black.”

“Oh, dear. I’m afraid I can’t remember anything more so I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the position.”

“I’m not so sure – I have a couple of ideas.”

Amazingly, knowing only that the position was legal we were able to work out which pieces were white and which black. We even managed to work out which player was to move.

Can you do the same?

John Nunn

If you are interested in solving chess problems, the book Solving in Style by John Nunn (Gambit Publications, 2002) provides lots of useful advice. The book is available form amazon.co.uk or amazon.com, or from most chess booksellers.