If you have a few chess sets at home, try the following exercise: Arrange eight queens on a board so that none of them are attacking each other. If you succeed once, can you find a second arrangement?

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

I have three chess puzzles for you this week, but you don’t need to know the rules of chess for two of them. These two are variants of the famous eight queens puzzle, which asks solvers to position ...

The problem first appeared in 1869. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. A chess problem that has stumped mathematicians for more than ...