Did you solve it? Are you on board with these quirky chess puzzles?

Earlier I set four chess puzzles; here are their solutions. 1. Oddities: In a tournament where not every player meets every other, some competitors played an odd number of games. The total number of games played by everyone is even, since each game involves two players.

Adding odd and even numbers to get an even total requires an even number of odd addends, so the number of players with an odd number of games must be even. 2. L of a trip: A knight moves from one colour to the other on each move. A full tour visiting every square once needs 63 moves, so the knight ends on the opposite colour to where it started.

Opposite corners of a chessboard share the same colour, so a tour starting in one corner cannot finish in the opposite corner. 3. Pawn return: The fewest moves to have a pawn leave its starting square, promote, and return is six. One sequence begins with a pawn on B2 (second column, second row).

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