Can you solve it? Pawn pandemonium

Today’s puzzles are about pawns on a chessboard, but they demand no skills at chess. All you need to have to know is that the queen can shift in any course, for any variety of squares.

The initially puzzle was devised by Maurice Ashley, the US chess grandmaster, and taken from his app Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess. He describes it as a visualisation training to entire in less than two minutes.

Can you obtain a route in which the queen captures all 11 pawns in accurately 11 moves? (The pawns do not transfer or secure each and every other.)

It’s a enjoyment puzzle, a bit harder than you might expect.

The rationale it arrived to my consideration, nevertheless, is since Maurice’s visualisation exercising caused a flurry of exhilaration in the challenging main puzzle neighborhood at StackExchange.

Bernardo Recamán (a close friend of this column and legend in recreational maths circles) requested if was attainable to retain the constraint of the puzzle but increase additional pawns.

In other text, how many pawns can you place on a chessboard this sort of that the queen has a exceptional path to seize all the pawns in precisely as quite a few moves as there are pawns.

Daniel Mathias uncovered an instance with 14 pawns.

Not to be outdone, loopy walt upped it to 16 pawns

Before publishing 1 with 19 pawns.

Can you clear up them all?

If you are seeking the puzzles out on a display, it is handy to use an application like Markup, but if you are old faculty and prefer pen and paper, I have place them all on a pdf right here.

I’ll be again at 5pm Uk with the remedies.

NO SPOILERS You should examine your favorite chess grandmasters.

Thanks to Bernardo Recamán.

I established a puzzle listed here every single two months on a Monday. I’m normally on the look-out for fantastic puzzles. If you would like to propose just one, e-mail me.

I give college talks about maths and puzzles (on line and in individual). If your school is intrigued please get in touch.