We don’t really know how the game was invented, though there are suspicions. As soon as we discover the culprits, we’ll let you know. – Bruce Pandolfini, Fischer’s one time chess trainer.
Early last Sunday morning, Loris Nathoo called to say that he had solved the one thousand year ‘Dilaram Checkmate,’ and insinuating teasingly that perhaps I may wish to come up with a position that truly excites the imagination, I humbly accepted the challenge, and came up with a famous puzzle. Please permit me to tell you the story surrounding that puzzle, and the chain of events which it engendered.
The story begins when Dr John Nunn, British chess grandmaster gave German chess player Frederic Friedel a chess problem to solve. Friedel studied philosophy and linguistics at Oxford, and in the nineteen eighties did a feature on computer chess and artificial intelligence. Dr Nunn sealed the solution to the puzzle in an envelope