The perfect Babson

12/1/2018 – Remember our article on the Babson task? Tim Krabbé told us the tragic story of how a fanatical problem composer failed, after 22 years of exhausting labour, to find a position that required quadruple echo promotion — only to see a 26-year-old soccer trainer succeed with multiple examples. Today there are 20 known examples, but none are free of duals. A very erudite 99-page paper by Peter Hoffmann describes the current state of affairs, and problemist Werner Keym is offering substantial cash prizes for the perfect Babson.