Saturday, June 30, 2012

Setting a chess puzzle

I was delighted this week, when I thought I managed to construct a delectable Chinese chess puzzle, pretty much by accident and chance. It contained a somewhat less commonly used theme as well as an accidentally set sacrifice. Happily, I chugged it into the engine for sidelines, and maddeningly, about 3 strange defences materialised out of thin air, defences I had never considered. In the end, I hereby resign to my sad puzzle-setting fate and present you the somewhat correct (but not a mate) puzzle.

Uhh... how do I write the plaintext for it again? Meh.

###AK#PR#
####A##H#
EP#######
##P#P##H#
P####P##H
#########
P#####PPR
####E####
######RP#

R####K###


Red to move and win, of course.


More on how my puzzle failed in a later blogpost, if I remember and can be bothered to make the effort. It's late and I'm braindead too. But in the meantime, enjoy the puzzle.


Just in case I remembered my own notation wrongly, the one presented is as follows:
P -- the most important, powerful, and prevalent piece (Darwin's theory!) on the board.
E -- elephant, minister, whatever. The mascot of Chinese Chess (Xiang Qi)
A -- The advisor, or "shi".
R -- Rook, or "ju", but probably not "che"
K -- The lousiest piece on the board -- never have I lost a game not because of it
H -- Knight (or was it N?). Either way, the "ma".
C -- Not featured in this puzzle, the sneaky cannon, or "pao".

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