In the mystery of the week of last weekend, it was about a chess task, for which there is more than one solution. Readers have sent us dozens of other solutions - thank you! With a few exceptions, all submissions were correct. A selection of this will be shown below.
Again the problem: in front of you is an empty chessboard. You have five ladies to position you on the board so that each free space is threatened by at least one of the ladies.
We proposed the following two solutions:
The two example solutions
But there are many more. Altogether there are 4860 different ones. At least that is the identical conclusion of three readers, who each searched for the solutions with a self-written computer program. They systematically tried all positions of five ladies on the board and looked at each (by code), if all fields are threatened.
In the most curious solution, all five women are in a row. Nevertheless, all fields are covered by them - of course partly over the diagonals.
MIRROR ONLINE
Pretty nice are the following two solutions, where four ladies stand on a diagonal.
MIRROR ONLINE
MIRROR ONLINE
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In many of the solutions sent in, four ladies make up the corner points of a square, which is slightly rotated in relation to the chessboard. Such solutions - as well as others without symmetry - are collected in the following slider.
Selected solutions from readers
A solution with symmetry!
Another symmetric solution!
Four ladies form a square turned in relation to the chessboard.
Many submitted solutions are based on such a rotated square.
These too.
The squares in the solutions are different in size but always rotated.
Again, this is a rotated square.
Four white ladies form a square in the middle. The four yellow ladies mark the four possible positions of the fifth lady.
However, there are also solutions without obvious symmetry.
Like these.
Another solution without symmetry.
In total there should be 4860 different solutions. The list accessible via the following link contains all these solutions. Unfortunately, we were unable to test these solutions. The overview created with a computer program comes from the reader Olaf Zurth. Thank you!
