About 55 players took part in the SP World Open Puzzle Solving Championship. The top 2 seeds are the two young phenoms Luke Harmon and Kayden Troff. Luke just defeated GM Gurevich and WIM Melekhina last night in the US Game 10 Championship. Kayden won the Utah Blitz and Open Championship.
Luke broke the previous record of this event by scoring 10/10 in 90 seconds!! Only 6 players (4 boys and 2 girls) got all 10 correctly.
How long would it take you to solve these same 10 puzzles?
Here are the answers:
Puzzle 1: 1.Qh7#
Puzzle 2: 1.Nc6#
Puzzle 3: 1.Bd7 #
Puzzle 4: 1.Rd6+ Kf5 2.Rf6#
Puzzle 5: 1.d6+ Kd7 2.Nc5#
Puzzle 6: 1.Qg6+ Kxg6 2.Re6#
Puzzle 7: 1.Qxf8+ Kxf8 2.Ne6#
Puzzle 8: 1.Qxf8+ Kxf8 2.Bh6+ Ke8 3.Nc7# or 2…Kg8 3.Rd8#
Puzzle 9: 1.Bc8+ Rxc8 2.Re3 any Black move and 3.Ra3#
Puzzle 10: 1.Rxh8+ Kxh8 2.hxg6+ Kg8 3.Be6+ Kf8 4.Rh8#
Standings:
Open
Name Correct Time
Luke Harmon 10 1:30
Christopher Kao 10 9:46
Tom Polgar 10 11:05
Soren Aletheia 10 12:15
Sayaka Foley 10 14:20
Alex Bian 9 3:50
Kayden Troff 9 6:20
Nicholas Tomlin 9 12:38
Harrison Stanton 9 33:00
Yvonne Trang 8.5 32:00
Brandon Li 8 12:48
Richard Qi 8 12:58
Emily Peterson 8 14:35
Bailey Corry 8 21:07
Christina Kao 8 32:10
Lauren Treiman 7 22:37
Evan Anthopoulos 7 31:35
Kevin Jin 5 17:58
Shelley Anthopoulos 5 31:25
Andrew Perez 5 32:30
U-1000
Becca Lampman 9 26:25
Taylor Bader 9 31:50
Nicholas Naylor 8 19:40
Christopher Griffin 8 23:15
Sam Mason 8 31:30
Eli Karp 7 21:10
Jonathan Naylor 7 23:00
Justin Kao 7 32:05
Brunston Poon 6.5 24:45
Cecilia Tisserand 6 28:29
Diego Guttierrez 6 30:00
Dhruva Chatterjee 6 31:40
Noe Alba-Jimenez 6 31:55
Carmen Pemsler 6 32:45
Thayer Aletheia 5 18:10
Eli Mihoofar 5 32:20
Bernadette Perez 5 33:05
Alexander Taylor 4 18:00
Felix Perez 4 27:25
Cameron Heidenreich 4 32:35
Vince Hung 3 19:30
Ethan Minoofar 3 21:40
Quinten Barker 3 32:55
U-600
Miles Tisserand 9 30:45
Nicole Mann 6 31:45
Bryan Rodriguez 5 31:15
Madison Duffy 5 32:50
Sandra Alba 4 32:15
Bryce Berkbigler 3 31:20
Ricardo Alba 1.5 32:25
River Guinan 1 32:40
Good Test, is a very fun and low hard, Edgar Garcia
http://ajedrezmonclova.blogspot.com/
Monclova Mexico
but these are just simple mate in two stuff… wats impressive about that?
Hehe, how fast did u do it Anon Friday, June 5, 2009 11:09:00 PM CDT?
Solved it, but it took a few minutes. 90 seconds is awesome.
took me 42 seconds… the only delay happened when i realized that the test was intended to be a mate in two session…. i was lookin at the first position with Black to play… 🙂
Solving those didn’t take me too long, and I think I would have done this in the given time, too.
But additional writing down the solutions (correctly) that would have taken more time (I think the writing down would have taken me more time than solving the problems).
I do not like posts like ano11:09’s but in this case he is right. The mates are very simple (even the mate in 4 just took me seconds to see), they may be good exercises for “normal” children but it is no wonder at all if a wunderkind who is able to beat some grand masters can solve these so quickly.
42 seconds? 4.2 seconds per problem? Even when you didn’t even know what color to start with. I think your watch needs some batteries 🙂
no its 42 seconds… i didnt write of course. i used to solve tougher problems even quicker when i was ten, im not even boasting about it cus im sure most of my competitors can do it at the same speed or faster…