Become a Chess Puzzle Guru

by Alexey Root
5/19/2020 – The acronym “AMA” stands for “American Medical Association” or “Ask Me Anything.” Another AMA acronym means “Ask Me Another,” a National Public Radio show featuring Puzzle Gurus. National Master Jeff Ashton is an aspiring Puzzle Guru, selecting and creating chess puzzles for his students. WIM Alexey Root shares Ashton’s efforts.

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What is a Puzzle Guru?

On National Public Radio’s Ask Me Another, Puzzle Gurus present puzzles of different types — such as rhyming games, musical games, or word games — to contestants. Art Chung is a Puzzle Guru. He creates puzzles and also edits and selects puzzles. As Chung explained in this linked video, at 1:43, “Writers come up with these brilliant ideas. My job is to put them all together”.

Chess teachers do something similar. They read chess books and search ChessBase for games or positions to turn into puzzles for their students. National Master Jeff Ashton was profiled in a previous article about how he uses ChessBase for teaching. He also uses the program for organizing puzzles, often created from games in the ChessBase databases.

Ashton’s favorite chess player is former World Champion Alexander Alekhine, but he really admires Puzzle Guru Art Chung. Here are three puzzles that Ashton has presented to his Panda Chess Academy students.

 
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1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nf6 3.cxd5 Nxd5 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.e4 Nf6 6.Nc3 Bg4 7.d5 Ne5 8.Nxe5 Bxd1 9.Bb5+ and White has a winning advantage. I studied the Queen's Gambit a lot as White, and had seen this trap a few times with various move orders. Chess memory: I think the first time I saw this puzzle was in a file that one of my chess teachers, FIDE Master Fred Lindsay, gave me many years ago. I was using some MS DOS-looking ChessBase software, no mouse, only a keyboard. The puzzle was on an A: drive disk. It was definitely the smaller plastic hard disk, not the floppy large ones. c6 10.dxc6 a6 is best, and has been played nine times in my database. White wins material. But I came up with a "puzzle" variation that begins with 10...g6. 10...g6 is my mate in 5 puzzle. I can't find any games in my database where White allows mate in 5 likes this, so I guess you can say it's my own analysis. I thought it would make for a fun, satisfying puzzle. Ideas/Motifs: Weak light squares, discovered checks, and forcing moves. Rating Level of the puzzle: 1000-2000. One time a parent got mad at me because 10...g6 is such a poor move and the parent had feelings of frustration because Black might not play 10...g6 in a real game. Other than that experience, everyone loves this mate in 5! 11.cxb7+ Nd7 12.Bxd7+ Qxd7 13.bxa8Q+ Qd8 14.Qc6+ Qd7 15.Qxd7# 10...e6 10...bxc6 10...Bg4 10...Ba4 11.c7+ I am 99% sure that this is the variation Fred Lindsay gave me. axb5 12.cxd8Q+ Rxd8 13.Nxd1 Nxe4 The line continues in one illustrative game as One alternative is 13...e6 14.f3 Be7 15.Be3 0-0 16.Ke2 Rc8 17.Nd3 Rfd8 18.Rc1 h6 19.a3 Nd7 20.Nc3 b4 21.axb4 Nb6 22.Bxb6 Rc7 23.Bxc7 Bxb4 24.Bxd8 Bxc3 25.Rxc3 1-0 (25) Braak,J (1982)-Cruz Lemus,U ICCF email 2018 14.Nc3 Nd6 15.a4 f6 16.Nf3 b4 17.Nd5 b3 18.0-0 e6 19.Re1 Kf7 20.Nb6 Nf5 21.Bd2 Bc5 22.a5 Rd6 23.Nc4 Rd7 24.Bc3 Rhd8 25.Ncd2 Nd6 26.Nxb3 Ba7 27.g3 e5 28.Bxe5 fxe5 29.Nxe5+ Kf8 30.Nxd7+ Rxd7 31.Rad1 Rf7 32.Re2 Bb8 33.Nc5 g6 34.b4 Bc7 35.Ne6+ Kg8 1-0 (35) Strikovic,A (2470)-Rodriguez Perez,A (2214) El Sauzal 2004
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WhiteEloWBlackEloBResYearECOEventRnd
Marshall Defense Mate in 5-Diagram and Source-2020D07
Puzzle from Lev Alburt--2020
The Rollercoaster--2020

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Chess Puzzle Guru

I (AR) also asked Ashton (JA) two questions about puzzles and chess students.

AR: Within ChessBase, positions with questions and answers are called “interactive training tasks”, but you use other terms, right?

JA: When I was a young teacher, I would experiment with “puzzles” versus “homework.” Calling it homework gets students to do it. This magic word “homework” makes parents remind them to do it. Calling it puzzles gives the players free will and the choice of not doing it. I like the word “puzzles” better. I remind students that they can go to bookstores and buy books full of puzzles, because chess puzzles are fun to solve.

AR: Should a puzzle have only one right answer?

JA: In many cases, I will throw away a question if it has more than one correct answer. If I decide to keep the puzzle, and it has two correct answers, I will award the same points to each correct answer.

Alternatively, I will re-write the question so that only one answer is correct. If a “find the mate in 1” puzzle has two correct answers, I will rewrite it as “find the pawn move that checkmates”. Even though the latter is an easier question, I fully commit to the “easy” factor. That is, it’s okay to have some ridiculously easy questions in the mix, and it adds some fun and humor.

I think of many puzzles as rhetorical questions. For example, “Moving the pawn to g5 and allowing checkmate in 1 is a blunder, true or false?” can be a thought-provoking rhetorical question that gets the solver to play the mate out in their head, before answering “true”. Stronger players think it’s funny. Weaker players sometimes get slightly angry by how it goes from confusing to easy so quickly.

Thus, it’s also important to encourage my younger students not to give up on the homework, while not boring my advanced students by making it appear too easy. When students see a printout of a typical sheet of nine puzzles, they might see a “mate in 3” puzzle early, and soon after there is a “mate in 1”. The “mate in 1” puzzle wins back my young students quickly.

[Pictured: Jeff and his son, two-year-old Jeffrey, looking at a puzzle from Lasker v Thomas | Photo: Edna Ashton]

From game to puzzles

For Ashton’s explanation of finding and annotating a game (his example is Edward Lasker versus George Alan Thomas), and then creating puzzles from that game, please visit this Panda Chess Academy blog posting.

After selecting a game, a teacher can easily insert training questions — also known as puzzles — using ChessBase. Having created those first few puzzles, and then hundreds more, a teacher may become a Puzzle Guru.


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Alexey was the 1989 U.S. Women's Chess Champion and is a Woman International Master. She earned her bachelor’s degree in History at the University of Puget Sound and her doctoral degree in Education at The University of California, Los Angeles. She has been a Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies at UT Dallas since 1999 and is a prolific author.

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