Chess Journal, 1873 (5th Tourney)

White to play and move so that Black can give mate in three moves (2 pr.)

White retracts last move, then #2 (2 pr.)

Either to play and mate or selfmate in 2. Each solution must commence with a different move. (2 pr.)

Motto required.

E. B. Cook, C. A. Gilberg

The tourney would close as soon as fifty problem had been received. (Closed in Feb., 1873)

1 pr. W. A. Shinkman (Motto: Yours truly)

2 pr. W. A. Shinkman ([Ausgespielt])

1 pr. W. A. Shinkman (Foul Play)

2 pr. T. M. Brown (Shall I perish in the Ocean?)

1 pr. T. M. Brown (Parva mora est)

2 pr. ??? (prb. 32) (Si sunt milites, etiam Dux)

The announcement noted This Tournament shall differ from others, by its being allowed for the same person to take any number of prizes to which his problems may be entitled. It added that problems would be published, under motto or other device, and that the identity of the contestants would be published in the Tourney Book.

The requirement for section A was sufficiently difficult to require a clarification.

It will perceived that the stipulation is not “White to play, and Black to mate in three moves, but that White can play so as to permit Black to mate in three moves; i.e. to say each of White's and each of Black's moves must be the only ones possible to produce a mating position.

This corresponds to a modern helpmate with one additional half-move for White's first move. (The unmatched quotation mark is as in the original.)

The first tourney problem was published in Chess Journal 4/30 (Aug., 1872), p. 51, and the last in 5/36 (Apr., 1873), p. [84])


S. Loyd mentions this tourney in Scientific American Supplement 5/127 (1878-06-08), p. 2028 (although he mislabels it Tourney Four), where he says:

Tourney No. Four seems to have been based upon two absurd stipulations of “white to play so as to allow black to mate,” and “ white to retract his last move and mate,” which ideas were first suggested in a burlesque sketch contributed by us to the Chess Monthly twenty years ago.

He goes on to mention the prize winners of the two first sections of the tourney, but thought that the problems were not worth preserving.

Loyd actually wrote two sketches: helpmate was the basis in Chess Monthly 4/11 (Nov., 1860), p. [321]-325, with the title The Sin of the Nuns, and retraction was used Chess Monthly 4/2 (Feb., 1860), p. 60-64, in the sketch Chess-Life in a Harem.


The problem that won the 1st pr. in section C (Parva mora est) can also be found in Theo. M. Brown: Book of Chess Problems (1874), p. 19. The printed solution in that source, however, seems to be misprinted.