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Another Mate in 12

Another Mate in 12

Posers and Puzzles

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Oops, the problem was badly cooked!

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Well... I tried to solve it, without any "luck"...

Is the problem wrong or your FEN:

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Originally posted by fetofs
Well... I tried to solve it, without any "luck"...

Is the problem wrong or your FEN:
The composers claimed to have computer-tested it, but Fritz found a cook in 8 moves. The cook was fairly uninteresting, so I withdrew the problem.

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Here's the cook:


#12

1.Bb2 a4 2.Rd4 Kf6 3.Rd6+ Kg6 4.c6 exd6 5.c7 and the new Q will mate in at most 3 more moves.

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Originally posted by BigDoggProblem
The composers claimed to have computer-tested it, but Fritz found a cook in 8 moves. The cook was fairly uninteresting, so I withdrew the problem.
The only utterly infallible way of showing a problem isn't cooked is to run an unpruned search to the correct number of ply. Fritz's mate search does this. However, to search to 23 ply without pruning would take an unbelievably long time.

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Originally posted by XanthosNZ
The only utterly infallible way of showing a problem isn't cooked is to run an unpruned search to the correct number of ply. Fritz's mate search does this. However, to search to 23 ply without pruning would take an unbelievably long time.
In this case, the composers could have effortlessly found the cook with Fritz9 - it flags 1.Bb2 as #8 after a mere 13 seconds on "Infinite Analysis"! Maybe someone should sell them some better test software.