Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Chessbase and Christmas Puzzlers

Posted by Hemos on from the using-the-noggin dept.

A number of you might remember our Christmas Chess Puzzler. Frederic Friedel and I have stayed in contact over the last couple of months and he recently put together a piece talking about the puzzler and Slashdot, as well as narratives of other chess puzzlers. Frederic runs Chessbase, one of the best chess resources I've seen. That leads to an interesting question: Would you folks like occasional puzzlers like this? Post your feeling on it below.

6 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. I feel really ignorant now. by Azog · · Score: 3

    I went and read the Chessbase stuff. Wow, do I feel ignorant now. "reciprocal zugzangs..." WTF??

    I like puzzles, but I think I would do better with little programming puzzles - like, write an ANSI C program to do "X" using only the standard libraries that is no longer than 250 characters... for various interesting hacks "X".

    That I could tackle. But this level of chess is like high-energy physics - I don't even have the vocabulary.

    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

    --
    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
    "HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
  2. It's not the puzzle, it's who you're up against by intmainvoid · · Score: 4
    Surely the attraction of puzzles on Slashdot is not the puzzle itself, but the chance to solve in the company of, and hopefully ahead of, the rest of the Slashdot audience - the assumption being that there are some bright minds around here.

    It's really just about ego - who wouldn't kill to tell their grandchildren that "I solved the Slashdot Christmas Chess puzzler of 2000".

    --
    Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
  3. Refreshing by 348 · · Score: 3
    Now that was refreshing. With all the hooplala about /. this and /. that, VA's goin' ruin it, yadda, yadda, yadda. To have someone of the stature of Friedel say

    you should definitely pay the site regular visits if you are interested in science, technology, computers, programming and weird stuff in general.

    Sort of makes you step back and realize the site never really lost the wide ranging appeal wich brought most of us here in the first place. Of note " Weird stuff in general. sort of sums it all up.

    Great article, Although I never even came close to finding the correct solution.

    --

    More race stuff in one place,
    than any one place on the net.

  4. Please keep them smart. by Xerithane · · Score: 3

    I love the puzzlers on a lot of the websites, even some question of the day type things.
    But please, please, keep them relatively intelligent, and perhaps find a way to ban comments from appearing on them for a brief period of time so you don't have people shouting out the answers. And then whoever submits the first post (Still have the comments, just hide them) wins a "Slashdot headline" award, where it says they're name and their solution. Please deposit $0.02 and drive through, thank you.

    --
    Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
  5. I like puzzles by limpdawg · · Score: 5

    I think that these types of puzzles should get their own section on slashdot. That way all the people who hate them can ignore them and the rest of us can try to figure them out. Also there should be more than just chess problems, there should be a good variety. This way different people can apply their skills. Not everybody is good at chess and not everybody is good with words.

    --

    Nascantur in Admiratione. (Let them be born in Wonder)

  6. Just curious by Amphigory · · Score: 3
    Am I the only one around here who prefers Go to Chess?

    For those of you not familiar with it, Go is a Japanese equivalent to chess. Some claim that Chess is a distant descendant of it. It's much more artistic than Chess -- you can tell a whole lot about a person from their Go playing.

    --

    --
    -- Slashdot sucks.