Emo Philips says one of his favorite things to do is go to the park and play chess with the old men there. Unfortunately, he says it’s difficult to find thirty-two of them…  

This week’s Micro Softy is about chess and is short and sweet. It’s a chess problem presented to fledgling programmers to illustrate search optimization.

It’s called the Queens Problem: Place 8 queens on a standard 8×8 chessboard so that no queen can capture another.  My fourteen-year-old grandson Tristan did it, but it took some time.

The illustration above shows eight queens on an 8×8 chess board. (This picture is not a solution to the Queens problem.) The more general problem given to beginner programs is to place N queens on an N×N chessboard so that no two queens attack each other. We can solve the N=8 problem simply by looking at a chessboard and using common sense and some trial and error. No computer is needed. But for chessboards larger than N×N, a computer program is more helpful./ChatGPT

Here’s an interesting generalization:  Place N queens on an N×N chessboard so that no two queens attack each other.  It’s easy to show that there are no solutions if N is equal to 2 or 3.

Note: Solutions to the Queens problem have been known for quite some time. Some colleagues and I showed that a simple neural network could solve the Queens problem in 1988. See J.G. McDonnell, R.J. Marks II and L.E. Atlas, “Neural networks for solving combinatorial search problems: a tutorial,” Northern/88 Conference Record, vol. II, pp. 886–876, (Western Periodicals Co., North Hollywood, CA), Seattle, WA, October 1988.

Solution to Micro Softy 95: By Any Other Name

Last week, we started the Micro Softy with the phrase “There’s a woman with an unusual name.”  The rest of the information given was pure obfuscation.  The Micro Softy then ended with “I have just told you her unusual name. What is it?”

Removing the distracting facts, the answer emerges.

The woman’s unusual first name is “There”.

The Monday Microsofty is a weekly feature of Mind Matters News. Here are the links to all the puzzles and answers to date:

Monday Microsofty 95: I told you her name but …You weren’t listening. Getting to the core of a problem doesn’t need to involve math. Here’s one that doesn’t. To answer last Monday’s tree planting dilemma, look for shapes other than squares.

Image Credit: goami - Adobe Stock

Monday Microsofty 94:  A Tree Planting Dilemma This week’s puzzle sounds simple but it involves thinking in terms other than squares. The answer to last week’s “count the squares” puzzle can be turned into a formula that can be applied to any number of dimensions.

Monday Microsofty 93: Square dance with the mathematicians! How do we determine how many squares there are in squares of squares? Or cubes of cubes? Hint for the handshake problem in Microsofty 92: Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) provided a formula for this.

Monday Microsofty 92: When the nerd enters a room… Shaking hands is expected. Here’s a math question about the custom, to delight the true nerds among us. A hint for Microsofty 91: Where might Jimmy the Mooch have found some spare energy? You can find links and answers to Microsofties 91 through 87 here as well.

Monday Microsofty 87: Are you as good a detective as you think? Here’s a test from the world of codebreaking To solve last week’s puzzle, look up the definition of “calorie.” Are we using the word to mean the same thing? You can find links and answers to Microsofties 77 through 86 here as well.

Monday Microsofty 76: The Smoking Gun explains a computer scientist or engineer, a law enforcement officer often relies on abductive reasoning to crack a case, so with this in mind, you will have to crack last week’s puzzle. You can find links and answers to Microsofties 55 through 75 here as well.

Monday Microsofty 55: “It happens every spring.” Baseball, that is. Here’s a puzzle that takes in baseball’s summer. To solve last week’s puzzle, you don’t need to know the distance. Check the problem again for the number you do need to know. You can find links and answers here to Microsofties 51 through 54 as well.

Monday Microsofty 50: Cutting through the cornbread. How did Yuri Senior cut the cornbread into eight identical portions using only three straight cuts? You can guess the answer to Microsofty 49 if you try the test question yourself at home, using a small mirror. You can find links and answers here to Microsofties 46 through 49 as well.

Image Credit: BUDDHA - Adobe Stock

Monday Microsofty 45: Can Tony beat the fast-food curfew? An early curfew on fast food service motivated a boy to exercise more vigorously. But how fast was he pedalling? To solve Micro Softy 44, recall that Tony doesn’t need to take the individual pills each day, only the prescribed amount of each. You can find links and answers here to Micros Softies 41 through 44 as well.

Monday Microsofty 40: The fate of a false prophet. He wasn’t actually fired for being a false prophet but for something that his prophecy unintentionally revealed. The solution to Micro Softy 39 lies in considering an alternative possible meaning of a word commonly used in sports. You can find links and answers here to Micro Softies 30 through 39 as well.

Monday Microsofty 29: A funeral lament in four lines. The funeral director was puzzled by Dan’s description of his relationship to the deceased but there was no question that his grief was sincere You can find links and answers here to Microsofties 22 through 29 as well.

Monday Microsofty 21: Finding More of the Deadly Fentanyl Pills. You can find links and answers here to Microsofties 11 through 20 as well.

Monday Microsofty 11: What Happened to That Other Dollar? You can find links and answers here to the first ten Micro Softies. Have fun!