Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes: Fifty Tantalizing Problems of Chess Detection

Here — from philosopher/logician/puzzlemaker Raymond Smullyan — are fifty elegant, witty, and altogether unique “chess mysteries.” In each problem the solver has to deduce certain events in a game’s past. For On what square was the White queen captured? or, Is the White queen promoted or original?

Since these problems involve the same sort of logical reasoning that lies at the core of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Raymond Smullyan has aptly set each one within its own Holmes-Watson dialogue. In each case Holmes, by his remarkable powers of deduction, is able to demonstrate to his awed admirers precisely what must have happened, move by move, at the “scene of the crime” — the chess table. For what the missing piece is; what square it should be on; whether or not either side can castle.

In the second half, through a series of progressively more difficult (self-contained) chess problems, Holmes, with the reader’s help, solves a mystery and a double murder — perpetrated, of course, by Moriarty. And at the end of the book are ten bonus problems from Moriarty himself (four of them composed before the age of nine!).

Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes is Smullyan’s challenging and witty romp through the royal game.