The Numberphile gets his own Thread and Presents another Chess Problem

[Father Dugal]

While I never excelled at math, I can and do appreciate the beauty and oftentimes erratic behavior of numbers. I mean it's easy to see why since many surreal matrices of thought have trouble adhering to all the rules of accepted reality. And numbers certainly are no different. In your mind you may think they form an unshakable line of symbols stretching into eternity, but even infallible symbols have their skeletons and mad uncles lurking in the closets and dark recesses of abstractville.

Speaking of oddities, here is the Numberphile taking you on another meeting between math and chess. In this video he tackles the classic puzzle of whether or not you can place eight queens on a chess board so that no queen can be taken by any other queen on the board. This requires the aid of factorials and a bit of mathmagic.

[Casey]

Haha! I actually partially solved this problem before it was given. I said to myself, "Self, why don't you put the Queens a Knight's move apart? That will keep them closer together but they still won't be able to attack each other." When you look at the solutions, that's what the Geek did.

[Father Dugal]

Haha! I actually partially solved this problem before it was given. I said to myself, "Self, why don't you put the Queens a Knight's move apart? That will keep them closer together but they still won't be able to attack each other." When you look at the solutions, that's what the Geek did.

I didn't bother with attempting to solve the problem beforehand. I just watched the video straight on through. I suppose that may the reason I'm not very good at solving puzzles.

[Father Dugal]

Here's another chess puzzle to consider. If you were to remove the upper and lower corner squares from a chess board, can you then fit 31 dominoes into the squares that are left?

[Casey]

Eh, a logic problem with a chess board doth not a chess puzzle make.

Still, that was interesting.

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