4th Puzzlemania puzzle! Do not forget to join the group :)

30.06. UPD #1. Within the first day of the event, I received A LOT comments from many users who told me that it is possible to mate in 2 moves or there are multiple solutions for this problem. All those users were mistaken. There exists exactly one solution and there is NO mate in 2 moves. However, if you still think that the problem is not valid, feel free to comment here and contact me after that. But please check and double check your solution before doing this.

Hello, Steamgifters!

This is already the fourth Puzzlemania event! I hope you are as happy as I am :) If you missed my previous puzzles and do not have a clue what Puzzlemania is, you can check these threads: first, second, third.

The latest puzzle received mixed reviews: some people enjoyed it, others however considered it to be very vague and difficult. Lessons learned, this time the puzzle will be very straightforward. It does not mean that it will be easy, most probably not, at least for the majority of people. However, the rules will be very transparent, you will not need to guess what I was thinking about when creating this puzzle. I hope it sounds a bit motivating.

Now, towards some bad thing happened during my last puzzle. Good steamgifters and I found together three different forums where bad steamgifters asked for help with solving my puzzle. I would like to remind you that this is not acceptable and SG rules forbid this. This is an individual puzzle, so please try solving it alone. Probably people tried to cheat because I gave away Witcher 3 gift, which is a very popular AAA game. So, this time there will not be such an expensive giveaway. However, the total amount of giveaways will be 26, which is also quite nice, right?

I am also not sure if people like my puzzles at all or the only reason why they solve them is to gain access to giveaways. To investigate this issue, I attached the poll to this topic. This is a serious question for me, so there is no a potato option in the poll, sorry for that guys. It is not a 'please-praise-me' poll. If I find out that the people here do not like my puzzle, I can stop creating them and just give away the games without any efforts for both sides.

Congratulations to everybody who read my bullshit up to this point because from here the description of this puzzle officially begins! This puzzle is about the good old game of chess. Sounds boring? Do not worry, we will add an exciting rule to this game! :) Basically, try to imagine that the board is looped. To better understand it, let's take a look at the diagram attached. In normal chess white knight would only have two possible moves: Nb3 and Nc2. However, we looped the board, so now, for example such moves as Ng2 or Nh7 are also possible. By looping the board I mean that 1st horizontal is now connected to 8th one, and the A vertical is connected to H one. When you got the whole point, here is the problem: white to mate in 3 moves. Find them! The answer should contain only three white moves without numbers or spaces. Also, if you eat something or check the king, ignore the signs. So, insted of writing N:b3 or Bd4+, just write Nb3 and Bd4 accordingly. The example of the answer, so you can understand the format: Nb3Bg7Kf5. So, in this notation King = K, Bishop = B, Knight = N.

I consider this chess problem to be quite a difficult one, however almost for sure I will not prrovide any hints because it does not make sense for chess problems. You will have two weeks to find the solution yourselves. The puzzle will end on Wednesday, 13th of July. The fastest solvers will be whitelisted by me.

Please believe me that you will very satisfied and will be very proud of yourself when you solve this puzzle. So, do not leave too fast and give it a try! :)

Good luck and have fun!

The list of the giveaways (points needed to enter everything: 400):

• A Story About My Uncle
• Abyss Odyssey (2 Copies)
• Avalanche 2: Super Avalanche
• BioShock™ (2 Copies)
• Blackguards
• Broken Age
• Contagion (3 Copies)
• Grim Fandango Remastered
• Foul Play
• Hack 'n' Slash
• I am Bread
• Metro: Last Light (3 Copies)
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
• Lumino City
• PAYDAY 2
• Remember Me
• Steredenn
• The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (2 Copies)
• War of the Vikings

Hall of Fame

The following early solvers have been whitelisted! Congratulations!

• Yukulele53

• Eohor

• Henryblah

• sumyy

• ValyrianSteel

• Nordhbane

• CalculonJones

• Caeler

• dead1ne

The solution

The solution briefly:

1. Bh8+ Ka5
2. Nh3+ Ka4
3. Be8x

So, the answer is: Bh8Nh3Be8.

The solution explained:

1. See diagram 2. After you check the king with Bh8, the only possible move is Ka5: square b7 is controlled by the knight, c6 by the bishop and the other bishop controlls the full diagonal a7-g1 due to the looping.
2. See diagram 3. White moved the knight to h3 and checked the king. Now, its only possible move is Ka4 (b6 is controlled by the bishop and b4 by the knight). Many players claimed that it is a mate already, but apparantly it is not true. Square a4 was controlled by the white bishop but the knight was just moved to h3 blocking the bishop.
3. See diagram 4. Be8 mates the king. The king cannot break the knight because it is still defended by the bishop.

Conclusions

Thank you all who participated in this event! The poll results clearly indicates that the majority (76 out of 114 votes, more than two thirds) likes my puzzles, so I will not give up creating them! I do not know yet when I will be able to make the next Puzzlemania event, I hope it will be before September. I already have some ideas, but they are still too vague.

As I promised, I did not provide hints during this event and still we have 48 solvers out of 159 players, which is more than 30%. Therefore, I consider this puzzle was too easy for steamgifters, so brace yourselves, the difficulty of the next event will be higher.

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