Solutions for Seriesmovers
A
consequent seriesmover is just a sequence of "teleports" across
the space of legal chess positions. As such, it's not really a fairy
problem: rather the solution is just a chain of legal positions. This is
very natural. Adjacent positions in the chain are linked not by a move but
by a move + a reversion of who has the move.
This consequence notion is also known as the Mauldon-Caillaud Convention. Who are these two people?
Michel Caillaud (see right) is a very nice chap and fearsomely prolific in chess problems. Of the 900 problems in the recently released 1994 FIDE album, over 30 are due to Michel. This photo of Michel Caillaud is taken from the problemesis Messigny report.
I have not been able to locate an image of J.G.Mauldon, who comes from an earlier generation. He was a captain in the Royal Tank Regiment in the British Army in World War 2, serving in North Africa and Italy. On Aug 25, 1944, while conducting reconnaissance North of Segillo in Italy, he stepped on a mine which fortunately failed to explode. After the war, he studied mathematics at Oxford and emigrated to USA in 1970. He retired a few years ago as Professor of Mathematics at Amherst College. He is an emeritus fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
{A} 1. g3 2. gxf4 3. Kxg4 4. Kg3 5. Kh2 6. Kg1 7. Kxf1 13. Kxd4 19. Kg4 20. fxe5 21. Kxf5 22. Kf4 23. Kxe3 24. Kd4 25. Kc5. Now Black's "last move" was d4, so White can play 26. exd6ep. And now Black's "last move" could have been, indeed must have been, dxc4 instead, so the position is legal. 27. dc7 28. c8N#.
This problem contains the very popular Excelsior theme, whereby a pawn marches all the way from the 2nd rank to glorious promotion. Why is the Excelsior so named?