Can You Solve Our 2018 Holiday Chess Puzzler?
Your favorite annual chess quiz tradition is back for the 2018 holidays.
Enjoy this year's quiz, and see if you can win one of our prizes for a top score.
UPDATE: Jan. 9, 2019 with winners and answers:
The winners:
1. @Grevozin -- Three years of Chess.com Diamond membership -- 20/20 score
2. @notsoevil001 -- Two years of Chess.com Diamond membership -- 20/20 score
3. @Stephen_Stanfield -- One year of Chess.com Diamond membership -- 20/20 score
4. @AquaticBlaster -- One year of Chess.com Platinum membership -- 20/20 score
5. @mrk98 -- One year of Chess.com Platinum membership -- 20/20 score
6. @Simonics217 -- One year of Chess.com Gold membership -- 20/20 score
7. @NCKChess -- One year of Chess.com Gold membership -- 20/20 score
8. @sisu -- One year of Chess.com Gold membership -- 20/20 score
9. @jonathanpiano13 -- One year of Chess.com Gold membership -- 19/20 score
10. @aquachan -- One year of Chess.com Gold membership -- 19/20 score
As stated in the rules, all ties were broken by earliest submission. Congratulations to all the winners and everyone who played.
Chess.com support staff will award membership prizes to the winners soon.
The answers:
2. Wesley So
3. rook
4. Vladimir Fedoseev
5. Chess.com
6. Jan-Krzysztof Duda
7. Anna Rudolf
8. Hou Yifan
9. 66
10. Stockfish
11. tractor
12. Richard Rapport
13. knight
14. Robert Hungaski
15. Levon Aronian
16. Austria, Colombia, Scotland, or Moldova (answers accepted federations with exactly seven grandmasters in either the "active" or "all" lists.)
17. White wins
18. Anatoly Karpov or Teimour Radjabov
19. 14
20. Sam Shankland
The automatic scorer accepted most variants of correct answers. E.g. Samuel Shankland, Richárd Rapport, Stockfish 220818 and Yifan Hou were all graded as correct. I tried to be as lenient as possible when setting up the automatic scorer.
Thanks, everyone, for playing, and have a happy new year.
Rules:
- All ties will be resolved by the earliest received submission, so send in your answers as soon as you know them. But try to be as accurate as possible—it usually takes close to a perfect score to win.
- Answers will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. (Pacific Time) on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019, and only a member's first submission will be considered.
- Spelling counts. The quiz is scored automatically by Google Forms, so make sure you spell your responses correctly. For player names, write the first and last name only in that order.
- Make sure you provide your valid Chess.com username and an e-mail for your answer receipts in the form.
Prizes:
- 1st place: Three years of Chess.com Diamond membership
- 2nd place: Two years of Chess.com Diamond membership
- 3rd place: One year of Chess.com Diamond membership
- 4th-5th place: One year of Chess.com Platinum membership
- 6th-10th place: One year of Chess.com Gold membership
The Puzzler:
(Mobile users: If you are having trouble filling out the embedded form below, you can complete the form here.)
Let us know what you think of the puzzler on Facebook or in the comments below.