Whatever happened?
- This is from a game I played las night against Celia.
- Who won?
- Can you find out what the last move was in the position in the diagram?
- Whose turn is it?
- That is a good question.
- Either Black moved the king or White moved the knight or the king.
- That’s a good start!
Problem source: Rund um das Schachbrett by Karl Fabel.
June 17th, 2009 at 4:51 am
What an excellent little problem!
If Black made the last move, it must have been with his king, but the only empty squares one king’s move away are a3 and b3, which Black’s king could never have been on, as the white pawns on b2 and c2 have attacked those squares from the beginning of the game.
So White made the last move. It was not with any of the pawns (they have never moved) or the rook (it had nowhere to move from).
Suppose White has just moved his knight. It must have moved from b3 as that is the only empty square one knight’s move away. If White did not capture, then Black’s move before that must have been with his king. Again, it could not have moved from a3. What’s more, it couldn’t have moved from a1, because it moved out of check from White’s rook, but White had no way to give this check: the rook had nowhere to come from to give the check directly, and there are no squares between the rook and Black’s king for a White man to move from to discover the check. So, still supposing that White moved his knight, it captured something. However, in that case, neither Black’s king nor the black piece White has just captured could have made Black’s last move.
So White’s last move was not with the knight. Therefore it was with his king, and the only empty square one king’s move away it could have moved from is d1. If White did not capture, then Black’s move before that must have been with his king. Again, it could not have moved from a3 or b3. Therefore White’s king captured a black piece. If this black piece was a queen, rook or bishop, neither Black’s king nor the black piece White has just captured could have made Black’s last move. Therefore, by elimination, the last move was White’s Kd1xNc1.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:30 am
The black King cannot have moved to it’s current location if the pawns were attacking, so the pawns weren’t attacking, so we’re looking at the board from another side than white’s. It has to be the black side (rather than a neutral side) because the lower left corner is black.
Could be (but haven’t exhaustively examined the problem) that the Knight was the last move after B King had moved down 1, presumably hoping to go for check rather than taking the knight. Hence Knight had to get out of the way.
It seems more likely that the W King had moved to prevent possible check after B King taking W Rook. That actually seem more likely. That’s as far as I can go and certainly not convinced I’ve got it right. I’m rubbish at chess.