5 ms·

Okay, here's my answer: all of black's pieces are blocked except for the bishops. The black king can't move without being checked by a pawn. All the black bisho

Okay, here's my answer: all of black's pieces are blocked except for the bishops. The black king can't move without being checked by a pawn. All the black bishops are on black squares (meaning two must be promoted pawns -- unlikely but possible) So the white king just needs to stay on a white square to stay safe. The so-called "aha!" moment was remembering that bishops always stay on the same color. I can't claim any great insight, it's just something I read somewhere (so it could certainly be programmed into a computer). I had to check that there was no way for the other pieces to escape. I'm not good at chess, so I just did a very quick check and then assumed it was probably fine -- given the nature of the puzzle it's unlikely there'd be a tricky edge case to cover there. The thesis seems to be that a computer could never develop and use general theorems that let you short-circuit the search process. That's probably true for chess engines (and also mostly irrelevant to real chess matches, rather than puzzles). Definitely an interesting question to explore. My guess would be that real computer creativity is possible, but may require some new techniques.

ars 10y ago
Keep in mind, they are not looking for the answer to the chess question. They are trying to understand what it is about humans that makes them instantly able to figure out how to figure out the answer. Humans can learn, computer can't. They can train on data, but so far none can teach themself how to train.
thaumasiotes 10y ago
> All the black bishops are on black squares (meaning two must be promoted pawns -- unlikely but possible) Is this possible outside the context of purposely making bad moves to humiliate your opponent? I thought you got to choose whatever officer you wanted, which would mean bishops are strictly dominated by queens.
- pjungwir 10y ago
  Underpromotion is real thing and has its (very rare) uses. Even underpromoting to a bishop can turn a draw into a win: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promotion_(chess)#Bishop_underpromotion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promotion_(chess)#Bishop_under...
  - curun1r 10y ago
    It kinda sucks that they changed to rule to require you to promote a pawn to a piece of your own color. The mate-in-1 puzzle on that promotion page that requires promoting a pawn to an opponent's knight is pretty neat and I can't see that rule having a practical impact on any real chess game.
- nthcolumn 10y ago
  I think the surfeit of bishopric is a hint that they are irrelevant >cough< - most people immediately see that the pawn promoted to queen gives white the win, a sort of 'don't even think about it' and that the likely solution is for white king to run forcing a draw. Black can only move the bishops back and forth. A dull end to what have must been a very strange game.
SilasX 10y ago
>The so-called "aha!" moment was remembering that bishops always stay on the same color. I can't claim any great insight, it's just something I read somewhere (so it could certainly be programmed into a computer). Yes and no. You can easily encode any specific heuristic into a computer. And brute force (add more hardware) can ensure you hit a lot of the heuristics. But the hard part is ensuring that your search of heuristics is intelligent, and only needs to do a small number of steps before it hits a good one; in your case, what caused the "same square" heuristic to reach the top of your mind so quickly? That's what we want to reproduce. (To be sure, the "bishops stay on same squares" heuristic is simple, but once you have a lot of heuristcs/theorems to build off of, it's just one fish in a very big sea, so you need a scalable, general approach.)

ars 10y ago

Keep in mind, they are not looking for the answer to the chess question. They are trying to understand what it is about humans that makes them instantly able to figure out how to figure out the answer. Humans can learn, computer can't. They can train on data, but so far none can teach themself how to train.

thaumasiotes 10y ago

> All the black bishops are on black squares (meaning two must be promoted pawns -- unlikely but possible) Is this possible outside the context of purposely making bad moves to humiliate your opponent? I thought you got to choose whatever officer you wanted, which would mean bishops are strictly dominated by queens.

pjungwir 10y ago
Underpromotion is real thing and has its (very rare) uses. Even underpromoting to a bishop can turn a draw into a win: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promotion_(chess)#Bishop_underpromotion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promotion_(chess)#Bishop_under...
- curun1r 10y ago
  It kinda sucks that they changed to rule to require you to promote a pawn to a piece of your own color. The mate-in-1 puzzle on that promotion page that requires promoting a pawn to an opponent's knight is pretty neat and I can't see that rule having a practical impact on any real chess game.
nthcolumn 10y ago
I think the surfeit of bishopric is a hint that they are irrelevant >cough< - most people immediately see that the pawn promoted to queen gives white the win, a sort of 'don't even think about it' and that the likely solution is for white king to run forcing a draw. Black can only move the bishops back and forth. A dull end to what have must been a very strange game.

SilasX 10y ago

>The so-called "aha!" moment was remembering that bishops always stay on the same color. I can't claim any great insight, it's just something I read somewhere (so it could certainly be programmed into a computer). Yes and no. You can easily encode any specific heuristic into a computer. And brute force (add more hardware) can ensure you hit a lot of the heuristics. But the hard part is ensuring that your search of heuristics is intelligent, and only needs to do a small number of steps before it hits a good one; in your case, what caused the "same square" heuristic to reach the top of your mind so quickly? That's what we want to reproduce. (To be sure, the "bishops stay on same squares" heuristic is simple, but once you have a lot of heuristcs/theorems to build off of, it's just one fish in a very big sea, so you need a scalable, general approach.)