Using only half of a chess board you may place five queens anywhere. After you place them, I move each queen at most once with standard queen moves. If I make a horizontal five-in-a-row, I win. Can you beat me?

I would answer this one as a riddle.

As it appears everyone is looking at it, the rules state that if he can move a piece 5 spaces he wins, so all the setups I've noted had one piece blocking the others.  He's allowed to move each piece once, why not use the first move to just move the blocking piece out of the way of the others.

I would look at the question a little more myself.  It demands that to win he must be able to make a 5 in a row horizontal move.  With a chessboard being 8 across and thus halve of it being four, I would use halve of the chessboard that left the horizontal (width) being 4 squares and vertically having 8.  Folding it this way would leave only rows only 4 wide making it impossible to move 'horizontal' five spaces at all, meaning piece placement is irrelivent.  He could go up and down 'vertically' and make 5, but again, the question demands that he move 'horizontally.'  So yes, I can beat you every time...

Posted by jesse on 2006-12-19 02:32:55