Christmas Puzzles 6 – cover the board!
In August 2019 I spent a week in France, at the training camp I had organized (together with ChessBase India) for young Indian super talents. Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik did the chess training, while I pestered the kids with logic puzzles. Most did not involve chess, but some did. Here are a couple for you. Photo: ChessBase
The trainees in the camp in Chens Sur Leman were (clockwise) GM P. Iniyan, GM R. Praggnanandhaa, GM D. Gukesh, IM Leon Mendonca, IM Raunak Sadhwani and GM Prithu Gupta, all in their very early teens. The session is described by Sagar Shah here.
2025 Christmas puzzle 14
Most of the puzzles I gave the super talents did not involve chess, but a couple did. Here is the first. I had a chessboard and a box of domino pieces, each of which could cover two squares of the board. I asked the boys to try to cover the entire board with dominoes. They looked puzzled: isn't that absurdly simple? One even started placing the domino pieces on the board – on a1b1, c1d1, e1f1, etc. "I need 32 pieces to complete the task," he said.
Okay, so now I placed two kings on the board, one on a1 and one on h8. "Can you now cover the board with 31 dominos?" I asked. And some of the kids actually started working on the task. After some minutes, their faces lit up, and I was given the correct answer to the problem. Can you, dear reader, figure it out?
Now that is a pretty famous puzzle, one you might know. In Chens Sur Leman I gave the boys another similar problem which you probably don't.
2025 Christmas Puzzle 15
On an empty chessboard there is a rook on a1. It can only move one square at a time. Can it move onto every square on the board just once and end on the squares 1) a8 and on 2) h8?
2025 Christmas Puzzle 16
My problem chess mentor Werner Keym gave me the following problem (original):
What is the greatest number of different mates in one move that can be delivered in a position with only the two kings and two white queens on the board?
Please do not post any solutions in our feedback section below. Let other readers enjoy the problems. Please submit your solution feedback here. We will reveal the solutions to all Christmas Puzzle in the first week of January 2026.
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.
Related News
