A Three Pipe Problem

Scott Tortorice

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Here's a devilish problem from the December issue of Chessgames.com's newsletter:

View attachment 32206

It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.
-- Sherlock Holmes, "The Red Headed League"

Here is a much different kind of chess puzzle. Given the position on the right, with Black to move, please tell us whether or not Black can castle. In other words, does Black currently have castling rights on the kingside, and why?

Ray Smullyan's Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes is filled with delightful retrograde analysis problems like this one. In order to solve problems of this variety, you'll need to consider the nature of the game that led up to this position.

It may seem confounding how one could learn this by studying the position. To get you started, consider for a moment the obvious fact that White could not have moved his bishops, king, or queen, for they are hemmed in by pawns. The missing rook on a1 can only be explained by a rambling black knight that swooped in to capture it, then escaped without a fight. If you think about it, there must have been a lot of knight rambling to produce this position.

That's all the help you get.
I got it right. :joy:

Highlight for the solution:



First think about the nature of the game that must have lead up to this position. It's obvious that the White knights went on a spree gobbling up all of Black's material, until finally the Black pieces snapped up White's knights. However, White has no knights at present, therefore Black must have captured the last of the White knights on his very last move. Previous to that, White must have played a3.

So now we ask, if Black's last move was the capture of a knight, which piece did the capturing? It should be quite obvious that none of the Black pawns could have done it. That leaves four suspects: the rook on a8, the bishop, the king, and the rook on h8.

The rook on a8 has an airtight alibi, as there is no way a knight could have traveled to a8, due to the pawns on c7 and b6.

Perhaps it was the bishop who captured the knight on c8? Nonsense, the bishop cannot have taken a knight on c8, because such a knight would have had to play Nd6+ which places White in check.

So that whittles our list down to two suspects: the king, and the rook on h8. And therein lies the answer! We'll never know which of those two did the capturing, but it matters not. Whichever of those two pieces did the capturing, Black has lost castling rights, at least on the kingside. Ergo, we have solved the problem: Black cannot castle.
 
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