Mathematician answers chess problem about attacking queens

# · 🔥 159 · 💬 34 · 2 years ago · www.quantamagazine.org · theafh · 📷
If you put your first queen near the center, it will be able to attack any space in its row, in its column, or along two of the board's longest diagonals. If you place your first queen along the side of the board instead, it threatens only 21 spaces, since the relevant diagonals are shorter. Unlike on the classic board, all the diagonals are the same length, and every queen can attack the same number of spaces: 27. On the classic board, most queens attack fewer than 27 spaces, which leaves more flexibility for building a configuration. "You can just move a couple of queens around, stick two new queens in and take one old queen out," explained Nick Wormald of Monash University. Because queens in the middle of the board attack the most spaces, most configurations feature more queens on the side of the board than near the center. Almost all the configurations have their queens distributed in a particular way, with fewer queens near the middle of the board and more along the sides.
Mathematician answers chess problem about attacking queens



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