9/4/2023 – On August 6th, to celebrate GM Helmut Pfleger's eightieth birthday, octogenarian puzzle master Werner Keym submitted two very clever little problems in two German newspapers. The puzzles, which had a unique form of birthday greetings encoded into them, were not at all easy to work out. Today we bring you the solutions.

8/6/2023 – He is one of our earliest friends in chess, a personality that has done more for German chess than anyone we know. He started as the country's most talented young player, became a grandmaster, a medical doctor, but continued to promote the game in numerous chess columns and TV shows. Today he turns eighty, and is still going strong. In our article we also include some unique problems that another octogenarian composed for his coeval colleague. | Photo Nadja Wittmann

5/23/2023 – Exactly 70 years ago today, on May 29, 1953, the world's highest mountain, Everest, was climbed for the first time – a heroic feat, exuberantly celebrated by all. Today, hundreds scale the mountain each year. 40 years ago the Mount Everest of problem chess, the daunting Babson task, which for a century had seemed quite impossible to do, was mastered for the first time. Today new versions appear regularly. Here are some of the best. It's great fun checking the symmetrical underpromotions with an engine.

6/25/2022 – Free association is an interesting mechanism to make up introductions for articles. Let us try: "Music was my first love and it will be my last", John Miles sang many years ago. The "Children" of Caissa rather would see their "Circle of Life" in Chess, where the WCCT-7 theme might have been predicted by Phil Collins in "Against All Odds" (who also performed the song named in the previous quotation): "Take a look at me now! There's just an empty space!", the bishop in the Kozłowski study might say this. | Photos: Pixabay

3/26/2022 – Due to recent events, in these times of turmoil that have divided the world, I will this time not speak on behalf of the WFCC, but on behalf of my own, my personal opinion. | Photos: Pixabay

3/1/2022 – Last Tuesday Werner Keym, one of the most creative problemists we know, turned 80, and we celebrated his birthday with samples from his book "Anything but Average". Today we give you the solutions to the truly unique problems, hoping you enjoyed them and were able to come up with the solutions yourself.

2/22/2022 – Werner Keym is a teacher (of French and Latin) and a musician who has organised more than 300 concerts in his town. In 2010, he ran for Mayor of Meisenheim and won in a landslide. Now in retirement he devotes his time to the family — he has six grandchildren — and to his hobbies. The foremost of them is problem chess, where he is the is one of the most creative problemists we know. Today he turns 80, and we celebrate with samples of his work. Prepare for an hour of fun.

6/23/2021 – The new edition of one of our favourite books, by problemist Werner Keym, now contains 400 famous examples of brilliant games, remarkable, sometimes outrageous studies, and preposterous chess problems. The book includes a lot of subsidiary diagrams that makes it particularly easy to read. We bring you a number of entertaining examples: for instance, can you find a forced mate in two in this position? There is only one key move that will do it.

4/24/2021 – How do you know that there is exactly one way to solve an endgame study? Tablebases are a proof, but unlike many other genres, there is no way to heuristically solve a study to find a complete proof of it being correct. That is where cook hunters come in. Columnist Siegfried Hornecker introduces us to the world of ‘cooks’ within the fascinating community of chess composers. | Pictured: Dutch composer Harold van der Heijden

1/4/2021 – In our December 31 puzzle page we showed you problems ranging from mate in one to mate in 203 – expecting this record from decades ago to have been broken. And indeed it was: there is now a direct mate problem in which you have to play 226 accurate moves to mate the opponent (i.e. it is dual-free). In our second solutions page we also provide the answer to the ominous train problem, which has eluded some of the brightest minds in the world.

1/2/2021 – From Christmas Day, December 25th 2020, until New Year 2021, we published four installments of chess puzzles for you to solve. They were mostly computer resistant, which meant you couldn't simply start and engine to work them out. Today we bring you the solutions of the first three puzzle pages, with the fourth to follow soon. How many did you solve?

12/26/2020 – Columnist Siegfried Hornecker wonders, What is it that which motivates me, and others? What is this mysterious thing that is called ‘beauty’? Why do we perceive something as beautiful? He then goes on to share the opinions of people who have delved into these thought-provoking questions. | Photo: Bas Beekhuizen / Batavia Tournament 2016

9/14/2020 – Publishing chess problems on this news site has a long tradition: especially at Christmas time we publish a set of entertaining puzzles for our readers to solve. But over the years – two decades actually – it became progressively more difficult to find problems that chess engines could not solve in seconds. It became pointless to issue a challenge and provide prizes. So we have taken to giving you problems which cannot be solved by computers. Here are some samples from a collection by Burt Hochberg.

8/2/2020 – What do you get when you celebrate a birthday? What happens when it is an especially auspicious birthday, e.g. one marking that you have made it to 3/4 of a century? Champagne, gifts, family party with the grandkids (in pandemic times in the garden). Chess friends have special things in store. They will write you a column in a national newspaper, or compose "number problems" for the years you have reached.

6/12/2020 – Take a look at this position. Can White (on the move) win? And if so what must he play? The position looks deceptively simple, but if you are able to solve it in your head, congratulations! Today's challenge is mainly to humans, and we bring you simple-looking positions from which there is a lot to learn. Have fun.

5/12/2020 – Can computers handle perpetual check? Could they do so ten years ago. And more relevantly: can humans? Even those with super-GM titles? Well, a 2351 player was able to do it better than his brother, who was rated 400 points higher. We have told the story before, but since our readers spent the weekend working on the Djaja problem, it may be of interest to remember how Aronian, Navara, Gashimov, Mamedyarov and Kasparov fared.

5/10/2020 – Today we want to bring all our locked-in friends something unusual. This article is not going to make you stronger, it will not improve your strategic wisdom, or inform you on what is going on in the (virtual) tournament scene. It is meant to purely entertain – just cause you to smile or chuckle. It includes what we claim is the easiest chess problem ever composed (picture). Enjoy.

4/8/2020 – Feeling locked up? Are you missing the chess club, tournaments that came fast and furious? In order to combat depression, the sinking feeling that comes with abstinence, we bring you a number of classical chess problems that will doubtlessly brighten up your day. They are from Werner Keym's upcoming book and all share a common feature: they are off-beat and clever, and require thinking outside the box. In addition: you can win a prize!

4/6/2020 – There's a new book in the making, one that contains the classics of chess, but also of the intricate art of chess problems and studies. The author is Werner Keym, one of the most versatile composers in the chess world. The book starts with the most famous games in history. Most of them you will know, but have you looked carefully at the moves, have you understood the plans and the tactics. You can do that on our news page, using our interactive JavaScript player. It's an opportunity to understand chess history better.

12/28/2019 – As readers who followed this column since its inception in 2017 will have noted, the December article always is a bit different. After 11 months worth of articles of varying difficulty, at the end of the year Study of the Month columnist SIEGFRIED HORNECKER aims for something special. Last year it was a column on Alain C. White, the botanist and philanthropist whose Christmas Series influenced chess composers all around the world. This year's protagonist has no connection to Christmas, but all the moves in his idea are special.

12/26/2019 – Christmas Puzzle week, which we bring you for the twentieth year in succession, is time for unusual and entertaining puzzles — tasks that are not amenable to computer assistance, but require human ingenuity. Try, for instance, to imagine how the position in the picture could have possibly arisen. Determining that needs lateral thinking. One of the foremost composers of chess problems "out of the box" sent us some highly entertaining examples. At least one of them looks quite impossible. Merry Boxing Day!

11/4/2019 – When Paul Morphy played Adolf Anderssen in 1858, only two games of the eleven in total were drawn. Steinitz vs Lasker in 1894 produced four draws in 19 games, but when Capablanca played Lasker in 1921 there were already ten draws in 14 games. In the Carlsen-Caruana match last year all twelve regular games were drawn, so the title had to be decided in tiebreaks. But such tiebreaks involve rapid chess game, blitz and even the ominous Armageddon. Is there a way to decide the World Championship in classical games only? Problemist Werner Keym has proposed a format that does exactly this. What do you think?

10/17/2019 – It is arguably one of the most elegant problems ever composed. The author is the late Pal Benko, a world class grandmaster and World Championship contender, who earned an additional ticket to immortality with his problems and endgame studies. The problem he composed when he was fifteen still occupies the nonagenarian. It has a dual, and we challenged our readers to find a modification to cure that. A large number tried. Today we show you Pal Benkös's own "correction".

8/30/2019 – It was with great sorrow that we learned, last Monday, of the passing of grandmaster Pal Benko, a world class player who earned an additional ticket to immortality with his problems and endgame studies. Recently we had shown you one of his most elegant chess problems, composed when he was just fifteen. It was a problem that still occupied the nonagenarian. In one line it has a dual, and at Pal's behest we challenged our readers to find a modification to cure that. A large number tried. Today we announce the winner of the competition.