Note: This puzzle was initially part of a compilation post. The description below may refer to other puzzles from the original post.
Featured today are a couple fun beginner puzzles for you featuring Don’t Move favorites Eric Rosen and Andrew Tang. Sadly Eric is on the receiving end of a tactic this time – but you can’t win them all!
As always, take your time and try to complete the puzzle using only the board in your head. Even working towards this will help in your Chess.
Couple-Too-Early: Like a regular Chess puzzle, except the image you see is a bit early. Follow along with the audio to get to the position with the tactic!
When you say use the board only in your head, do you mean that I should look at the board and then close my eyes and then listen to the audio? Or should I listen to the audio while I’m looking at the initial position and visualize the remainder in my head. ?
That’s a really good question. For CTE puzzles, you can look at the image of the position while you listen to the audio. They’re designed to simulate the kind of thinking we need to do in a game.
That said, if you’re finding the CTE exercises too easy want to push yourself that extra bit, memorizing the position then closing your eyes while you listen to the audio will be quite the workout!
Thank you for your quick response to all the questions !
Thanks I was wondering the same thing!
I have a question, often when I look at puzzles I struggle to accurately place the pieces for their initial position in my head, for example, here they were all correct but white’s king, who somehow managed to shuffle over to g1, I thought it didn’t seem quite right given the obvious tactic but if it wasn’t for that he might have gotten away with that.
Any ideas?
Hey Ben. That’s not uncommon, especially for people that swing more towards the logical side of visualization models. It might be useful, when you hear the location of a piece in the exercise, to take a second and ask what that piece is doing in the position. Is it protecting something, or attacking something? Blocking a key square, maybe? For logical thinkers, it can be hard to track a piece by location alone- we need to put each piece in the context of the position. When we do that, it becomes much easier to track (and we understand the position dynamics far more deeply too). I hope that’s helpful!
Hi Aiden, could you please expand a bit on the definition of CTE? Thank you, Thomas
Hi Thomas! Certainly.
The CTE is an exercise type designed to simulate exactly the kind of visualization we need to do in-game when we’re calculating ahead. We see a position, then listen to the audio. The audio contains a sequence of moves that we must visualize. When the audio ends, we try to spot the tactic in the future position.
There are two ways you can use these exercises. 1) look at the picture of the position as you listen to the audio; or 2) burn the starting position into your mind, and try to follow along using only your mental board. Either is fine. I recommend starting with option 1, then eventually progress up to option 2.
Does that explain it a little better?