[Retros] Invisible King

[Noam Elkies]

Juha Saukkola <juha_saukkola at hotmail.com> writes:


> Bad link (The requested topic does not exist.)


The link is OK once it's stripped of garbage characters: "=3D"
should be plain "=" and "&amp;" is just "&" (an ampersand).
That's yet another reason for sending e-mail as _plain text only_,
not duplicated in HTML or "rich text", attached, wrapped in MIME, etc. --
for almost all purposes such bells and whisltes are bugs, not features.

And yes, the position (White Ke8, Qg4, Be4 / K?, Bh5: WTM and win,
based on a Sam Loyd puzzle) looks like a sound "Invisible King" puzzle,
though the stipulation should be "mate in 4" since there are alternative
longer wins such as 2 Qd5 3 Qf5 4 Ke7 5 Bd5 6 Bf7 7 Qf6+ 8 Qg6+ 9 Qh6(g8)#.

The genre is reminiscent of Kriegspiel, though in Kriegspiel one gets
more information and is allowed to retract illegal moves (and thus gain
even more information by attempting a possibly illegal move).

NDE