For this finale installation, I created three categories of positions. In the first category, eight positions; in the second, ten positions; and in the third, nine positions. That's 27 altogether, and in all cases, White's (147-pip) position is identical, Blue has two checkers on the roof, three back checkers, and no blots elsewhere.
However, I discovered that 13 of those 27 positions were exact duplicates (arrived at in more than one category). Of the remaining 14, I looked for good "trios": those consisting of one non-duplicated position from each category, and leading to visually close target positions.
The position that Bob Koca discovered is one of my 13 positions, and I might just as easily selected it as "problem #1," and it would have fit in nicely. (I judged that if it were presented to me, I would find the actual problem #1 slightly harder, but I'm not sure that is true for others.)
For anyone who wants more than the original three problems to work on, I'm diagramming Bob's position below as "Problem 4." As implied in the previous paragraph, you might just stumble on it when working on the original three problems, as Bob did, though you are more likely to do so as an alternate to problem #1 (a slight hint) rather than problem #2, even though the latter is 1 pip closer.
(My ramble here will make more sense when you eventually read the solution post.)
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| XGID=-a----D-B---eD---c-db-B-AB:0:0:1:00:0:0:3:0:10 | |||||
Each side played twice | |||||
From the standard opening position, each side (legally) moved twice. How is this possible?
Nack