White to Play
Published in Chess Puzzles
Solution:
White’s last move was a promotion. Sly dog, that Nabokov. If you have that thought in mind, it can only be the rook or the queen and that there could have been an underpromotion is also a hint. Now can you see it? It’s still tricky. Think outside the box. Nabokov once published a book with his collected poems and collected chess problems all between the same two covers. This problem in the book caught my eye. Hope you had fun with it. Oh, the solution is that White’s last move was the pawn (starting at d7) capturing a knight (has to be a knight!) on c8 and promoting to a rook. White should have captured on e8 and promoted to a knight, giving mate. This is a fascinating problem in logic by process of elimination. A good many of us need to renew the discipline necessary to methodically get rid of non-working moves. Finally, you get to the right one. It also trains you to think of all possibilities, because too often we have a type of tunnel vision that inhibits our ability to solve problems of any kind—chess or otherwise.
Send questions and comments to PTamburro@aol.com.