Daily Rome Shot 1366

Morning light and my old doorway.

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This is a CRAZY historic puzzle.  White to move and checkmate in two.  However, there is a massive twist.8/4P1Q1/2P5/8/8/6Pk/5P2/7K w – – 0 1

Hint.  It’s not just checkmate.  It’s double checkmate.

The answer is so offbeat I don’t really expect anyone to work it out on their own.  It’s too bizarre and it concerns now-outdated rules of chess.

Meanwhile, lots of drama at Norway Chess.  I was able to follow the video of the coverage yesterday during my peregrinations… which involved massive and annoying delay.  In one game Hikaru was completely winning against Arjun Erigaisi, but he blundered by blitzing out  41… Rf6 and wound up resigning.  ONE MOVE!  BAM!  Look what happened after that.  It’s gruesome.   Very young children should be supervised.

Play at chess.com! HERE

BTW… since I have been putting up calendar pages during my travels, here’s a last shot for awhile. This is a busy page!

Here we see that it is the Feast of Justin Martyr (I have a 1st class relic) along with the founder of the Scalabrini.  We see that in the Vatican it is the 7th Sunday of Easter (Novus Ordo) and in Italy it is Ascension Thursday… Sunday.  We are informed that this is the beginning of the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart.  We are reminded that we are looking at the times for the city of Rome (Vatican City State is a different city and country) and that Rome has daylight savings going (ora legale).  We are reminded of some liturgical abbreviations.  We are informed that it is the World Day for Social Communications… woo hoo.  It is the 152nd day of the year and there are 214 to go.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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13 Comments

  1. Suburbanbanshee says:

    Cardinal Leo is one of the good ones. He’s really darned nice, but that doesn’t stop him from preaching the truth and doing the right things; and he’s good at articulating the Church’s teaching in a clear, understandable way. Toronto is really lucky to have him.

    (He temporarily stayed at my old US parish while he was going to postgrad/grad school near there. That’s how I know.)

  2. kurtmasur says:

    It’s refreshing to see Francis appointed cardinals of the good kind.

  3. Michael says:

    Doesn’t the white queen simply move down two squares? At that point, the king has nowhere to move.

  4. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    Tangentially, Norway Chess reminds me of a mystery novel by a Scottish chemist, Alfred Walter Stewart writing as J.J. Connington, set at the stately home of a family with Viking ancestry with a chess problem and Vulgate quotation and an indoor Regency chessboard with chessmen a foot-and-a-half high as central features of the mystery: The Dangerfield Talisman (1926).

  5. thomas777 says:

    I have never heard of a double checkmate, but by current rules you convert the pawn and then move the new queen to what I presume is g8. No stalemate checkmate. If you move your queen you either let the king out of his box or Stalemate black.

  6. thomas777 says:

    Its not g8 its h8 I stand corrected. Its early here.

  7. Suburbanbanshee says:

    Yeah… honestly, I think Pope Francis liked Cardinal Leo because they were both from families of “overseas Italians,” and somehow it just hit him right on a good day.

    I mean, it’s not like Cardinal Leo didn’t have a good resume. But I don’t think people were ready for him to become a bishop (much less a cardinal) until twenty years from now.

    I also have a Dark Suspicion that Pope Francis occasionally liked to appoint people bishops who didn’t want to be bishops, especially if his own supposed allies also didn’t want them to be bishops.

    And if rumor is correct, and our current pope thought Cardinal Bergoglio hadn’t liked him, and therefore didn’t think he’d ever be appointed to any Roman or bishop positions until he was… well, that theory of mine might be true.

    But hey, if Pope Francis had a few generous or contrary moments, and they worked out, that’s okay. Heck, it could be the Holy Spirit having a sense of humor.

  8. A.S. Haley says:

    We are told “a massive twist” makes a double checkmate possible, but what can that be while still following the rules of chess? I remembered reading in an old chess book I grew up with about the 19th century rules adopted in London by the British Chess Association. A Wikipedia article on “Promotion (chess)” had this intriguing statement:
    “Other amusing problems have been created involving promotion to a white or black king, which Law XIII also appears to allow.”
    So that set me thinking, and the “solution” soon came — under those old rules. White begins with an unorthodox promotion of his pawn at e7, making it not a White piece, but a Black King:
    1. e7e8=BK!
    That King now gives black another piece to move (his first King cannot), but he has only one legal square:
    1. . . . Kd8
    Whereupon, White’s Queen performs a double checkmate with
    2. Qd7 double check and double mate!

    That article has some more fascinating history about chess promotion, and why the modern rules no longer allow such extremes. Thanks, Fr. Z, for unearthing this!

  9. Promote to a KING… which you could do back then.

  10. kurtmasur says:

    But what was the point of such unorthodox promotion to that of an opponent’s color? Was it specifically to win with what would be the equivalent of a “slam dunk” in chess?

  11. kurtmasur: Firstly, it is a puzzle, not a game. Hence, it’s purpose is to sharpen your skills and creativity.

  12. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    Father,

    I know there are all sorts of ‘fantasy chess’ – and all sorts of people who play historical versions of sports (not least ‘fencing’ – for want of an handier quick generalization) – but (with apologies if I’ve missed your illuminating discussions) – do many people play varieties of ‘historical chess’?

  13. A.S. Haley says:

    Chess rules are a matter of agreement between (and among) the players. If you play chess in a tournament, you and all other participants agree to play in accord with the rules as adopted by the organization sponsoring that tournament. Today, those rules are mostly those prescribed by the international chess organization, FIDE
    Before FIDE, there were individual country organizations, each with their own version of rules, and before that, there were individual chess clubs in various cities, again each with its own rules.
    As the Wikipedia article on Promotion (chess) describes, players in London in the 1850’s and 1860’s used the rules adopted by the British Chess Association. One of its rules was Law XIII, which (unlike FIDE’s current rule) was loosely worded and allowed all kinds of interpretations, since it placed no restrictions on what pieces to which a pawn could be promoted.
    As far as I can tell, there were no tournament games in 19th century London inn which the parties agreed to interpret Law XIII so as. to allow a pawn to be promoted to a second King, let alone one of the opposite color. But the point is that the Law could be interpreted that way, and so some clever puzzle inventors went to work and produced, among other examples, the problem Fr. Z exhibited.

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