One of the most ancient Board games, chess is not only developing tactical thinking, but also to improve other useful skills. For example, there are many logical brainteasers on the arrangement of pieces on a chess Board in a certain sequence. And for the solution of one of them, the researchers from St. Andrews University (UK) offered a million dollars.
To get rich will help the variation of puzzles called “the problem of the eight Queens”. In the original formulation sounds as follows: to place on a standard chessboard with 64 64 cells 8 Queens so that none of them was under the blow of the other. That is, based on the fact that the Queen has all the cells located on the verticals, horizontals and diagonals, the “path” of each of them should be of other shapes. With due diligence to find a solution to virtually any person and it would be strange if for the solution of this problem, the researchers would give a million (especially because of the known problem since the mid-19th century). The difficulties begin when we decide to increase the number of cells and shapes on the field.
It is logical to assume that the larger the field the harder it is to find a solution. And then the researchers decided to connect to the solver computer. But faced with another problem: when the Board size exceeds 1000 by 1000 cells, the computer freezes. Therefore, the experts suggested that all who wish to develop an algorithm to solve the problem or prove that it does not exist. According to researchers, who will be able to write a similar program that will be able to modify it to solve other more important tasks.
Based on the materials of “RIA-Novosti”
Chess puzzles is worth a million dollars
Vladimir Kuznetsov