Chess Puzzles Challenge: Can You Solve These 4 Quirky Problems?

AI Summary

The Guardian presents four chess-inspired puzzles, including problems with knights, pawns, and player game counts. Readers are challenged to solve these quirky puzzles.

The Chess Puzzles Challenge

Today's four puzzles are inspired by chess, with problems ranging from player game counts to knight movements on a chessboard.

The Four Puzzles

1. Oddities: In a chess tournament, some players played an odd number of games. Prove that the number of such players must be even.

2. L of a trip: Can a knight in chess visit every square on a regular 8×8 chessboard exactly once, starting from the bottom right corner and ending in the top left corner?

3. Pawn return: What's the fewest number of moves needed for a pawn to leave its initial place, get promoted/queened, and then return to its original position?

4. Four knights: Swap the two pairs of knights on a strangely-shaped grid by making one move at a time.

The Puzzles' Origin

These puzzles come from We Solve Problems, a charity that runs free maths circles for secondary school pupils across the UK.