30th October 2023

Selected by Michael McDowell

Michael McDowell

Commend, Julia’s Fairies, 2019-II

Helpmate in 2.5 (2 solutions)
Empress (R+S) c1
Princess (B+S) g6

Like the queen, which combines the moves of rook and bishop, the empress and the princess are composite pieces. The empress combines the moves of rook and knight, while the princess combines the moves of bishop and knight. In this helpmate the move order is WBWBW. The convention in fairies is that in addition to the four orthodox promotions a pawn may promote to any fairy piece in the diagram.