Detective Chess

Detective Chess is a puzzle game based on Chess, running on Windows 3.1 and 95. The program randomly generates a position using a variable set of White pieces. The squares where the pieces are placed are marked but the pieces themselves are not shown. The player must deduce the position of each piece from certain numbers which are generated by the program.

Each number represents the number of pieces attacking a certain square (by attacking a square it is meant that they could move directly to that square). There is only one arrangement of the pieces on the marked squares for which all the attack numbers are exactly correct.

The following two puzzles are (1) an easy puzzle with just five pieces, and (2) a more difficult one with eight. The downloadable shareware version generates only positions of the first type (with KQRBN). The registered version can generate positions with different board size, number of pieces, and even fairy pieces. There are other options available on both versions which will not be described here. There is also an old and very primitive Amiga version which is available in the Aminet archive under "/game/think/voz-chess.lha".

Here are the two puzzles:

Solutions.

• Download the program.
• Author's Home Page on Detective Chess.
• Author's Home Page.