From the Kanja Otogi Zoshi (“Collection of Interesting Results”) of Nakane Genjun, 1743:
Your friend has 30 go stones. He lines them up out of your sight, placing down either one or two stones with each deposit and calling “here” so you’ll know this has been done. When all 30 stones have been placed, you have heard him say “here” 18 times. How many deposits contained one stone, and how many two?
Here are a penny and a quarter. Make a statement. If your statement is true, then I’ll give you one of these coins (not saying which). But if your statement is false, then I won’t give you either coin.
Raymond Smullyan says, “There is a statement you can make such that I would have no choice but to give you the quarter (assuming I keep my word).” What statement will accomplish that?
A puzzle by the Hungarian-Canadian mathematician George Grätzer:
I’m writing an article about a round-robin tennis tournament, in which each player plays each other player once. I decide to pick one player and ask her which players she defeated (in tennis there are no ties). Then I’ll ask each of those players which players they’ve defeated. Is it possible to pick a player so that everyone in the tournament is mentioned in my article?
In an Arukone puzzle, the player must connect each pair of matching labels with a single continuous line. The lines may not cross, and when the solution is complete each cell in the grid must be filled by a label or a line.
Can you solve this one?
A.G. Buchanan posed this curious puzzle in The Problemist in July 2001. Who moved last? The question seems absurd. If each side has only a bare king, how can we know which made the last move?
The answer turns on Rule 5.2b in the Laws of Chess:
The game is drawn when a position has arisen in which neither player can checkmate the opponent’s king with any series of legal moves. The game is said to end in a ‘dead position.’ This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing the position was legal.
In the position above, suppose it was Black who moved last. He cannot simply have moved his king to the corner from a7 or b8, because in that earlier position Rule 5.2b would already have applied: The game would have ended in a draw at that point, and Black would have had no opportunity to move his king to a8. Similarly, Black cannot have captured a knight or a bishop on a8, because neither of those pieces (alone with a king) is sufficient to give checkmate, and again the game would have ended before the diagrammed position could be reached.
Black might have captured a rook or a queen on a8. But consider that case: Suppose there was a queen on a8, and the black king was in check on a7 or b8. In that case the capture was forced — Black had no other legal move. And hence even before the capture took place it would have been correct to say that “neither player can checkmate” — the capture was ordained and no possible mate lay in the future. And so the game would have ended at that point, and again we could never have reached the diagrammed position.
Hence Black has no possible legal last move, and the answer to the puzzle is that White moved last, capturing a black piece on c6. Because this capture wasn’t forced, Rule 5.2b is not invoked.
This is a technicality, but it’s an important one. In 2015 the World Federation of Chess Composition voted that the “dead position” rule applies only to retrograde (backward-looking) problems like the one above. More details are here.
We want to place a coin at each vertex of this figure but one. A coin is placed by moving it along a free line and putting it down at the end of that line. A line is called free if there’s no coin at either of its numbered endpoints. So, for example, we might put a coin on 1 by moving it from 4 to 1 and leaving it there. Then we could put a coin on 2 by moving along 5-2, then on 3 by moving along 6-3, on 4 by moving along 7-4, and on 5 by moving along 8-5. But then we’re stuck — there are no more free lines, and we’ve placed only five coins. How can we place all seven?
Kriegspiel is a variant of chess in which neither player can see the other’s pieces. The two players sit at separate boards, White with the white pieces and Black with the black, and a referee facilitates the game. When a player attempts a move, the referee declares whether it’s legal or illegal. If it’s legal then it stands; if it’s not, the player retracts it and tries again.
This makes for some interesting chess problems. In this example, by Jacques Rotenberg, White knows that there’s a black bishop on a dark square, but he doesn’t know where it is. How can he mate Black in 8 moves?
This is tricky, because if White captures the bishop by accident, the position is stalemate. Accordingly White must avoid bishop or knight moves to begin with. The answer is to try 1. Rg2. If the referee declares that this is illegal, that means that the black bishop is somewhere on the second rank and it’s safe for White to play 1. Nf2, giving mate immediately.
If the referee declares that 1. Rg2 is legal, then the move is made, Black moves his invisible bishop (his king and pawn have no legal moves), and it’s White’s turn again.
Now White announces 2. Rg8. If the referee says that this is illegal, then the black bishop is on the g-file, and White can safely play 2. Be5. Now if Black captures the bishop, then 3. Nf2 is mate; on any other Black move, 3. Nf2+ followed (if necessary) by 4. Rxh2+ is mate.
If 2. Rg8 is legal, then White plays it, Black again inscrutably moves his bishop, and now White plays 3. Rh8. (There’s no danger that he’ll capture the black bishop inadvertently on h8, because it cannot have been on g7 on the previous turn.)
Black moves his invisible bishop again and now White plays 4. Rh5 followed by 5. Rb5 (if that’s not possible then 5. Rh3 and 6. Be5), 6. Rb1, 7. Nf2+ Bxf2 and 8. Kxf2#. White wins in eight moves at most. In order to travel safely from a2 to b1, the white rook must pass through h8!
In 1882, a mysterious man using a false name married and murdered a well-to-do widow in Essex County, New York. While awaiting the gallows he composed poems, an autobiography, and six enigmatic cryptograms that have never been solved. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll examine the strange case of Henry Debosnys, whose true identity remains a mystery.
We’ll also consider children’s food choices and puzzle over a surprising footrace.
USC mathematician Solomon W. Golomb offered this problem in the Pi Mu Epsilon Journal, Fall 1971 (page 241):
Ted: I have two numbers x and y, where x + y = z. The sum of the digits of x is 43 and the sum of the digits of y is 68. Can you tell me the sum of the digits of z?
Fred: I need more information. When you added x and y how many times did you have to carry?
Ted: Let’s see. … It was five times.
Fred: Then the sum of the digits of z is 66.
Ted: That’s right! How did you know?
