"Excelsior" is one of

Sam Loyd Samuel Loyd (January 30, 1841 – April 10, 1911), was an American chess player, chess composer, puzzle author, and recreational mathematician. Loyd was born in Philadelphia but raised in New York City. As a chess composer, he authored a numb ...

's most famous

chess problem A chess problem, also called a chess composition, is a puzzle set by the composer using chess pieces on a chess board, which presents the solver with a particular task. For instance, a position may be given with the instruction that White is to ...

s, originally published in ''London Era'' in 1861. In 1867, it participated together with five other problems as a set in an international problem tournament. The motto for the full set was "Excelsior" (eng. 'Ever upward'), generally known as the title of the

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...

Excelsior Excelsior, a Latin comparative word often translated as "ever upward" or "even higher", may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature and poetry * "Excelsior" (Longfellow), an 1841 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow * ''Excelsior'' (Macedo ...

" by

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include " Paul Revere's Ride", '' The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely tran ...

, and as that term is very fitting for this particular problem, it is generally associated with it. It is not to be confused by a popular 1958 study of the same name by Russian

chess composer A chess composer is a person who creates endgame studies or chess problems. Chess composers usually specialize in a particular genre, e.g. endgame studies, twomovers, threemovers, moremovers, helpmates, selfmates, fairy problems, or retrogr ...

Vladimir Korolkov, which has a similar thematic motif.

Backstory

Loyd had a friend who was willing to wager that he could always find the piece which delivered the principal mate of a chess problem. Loyd composed this problem as a joke and bet his friend dinner that he could not pick a piece that ''didn't'' give mate in the main line (his friend immediately identified the pawn on b2 as being the least likely to deliver mate), and when the problem was published it was with the stipulation that White mates with "the least likely piece or pawn". It should probably be noted that the first publication, in 1861, is not accompanied by any such stipulation.

Solution

1. b4! :Threatening 2.Rf5 ''any''Any legal move by Black. 3.Rf1# or 2.Rd5 ''any'' 3.Rd1# (with possible prolonging of both by 2...Rc5 3.bxc5 ''any'' 4.R mates). White cannot begin with 1.Rf5 because Black's 1...Rc5 would pin the rook. Now there are multiple possible moves defending only one of the threats and one secondary non-thematical defence: 1...Rxc2 2.Nxc2! a2 3.Rd5 (or Rf5) a1=Q 4.Nxa1 ''any'' . 1... Rc5+ 2. bxc5! :Threatening 3.Rb1#. 2... a2 3. c6! :Again with the same threats as on move one, i.e. 4.Rf5 ''any'' 5.Rf1# or 4.Rd5 ''any'' 5.Rd1#. 3... Bc7 :Because both Rd5 and Rf5 are threatened; the alternative moves 3...Bf6 and 3...Bg5 would only defend against one or the other. The given move does defend against Rd5 in the sense that 4.Rd5 Bxg3 5.Rd1+ Be1 6.Rdxe1# takes more than the required five moves, and similarly for 4.Rf5 Bf4. 4. cxb7 ''any'' 5. bxa8=Q/B# :The mate is delivered with the pawn that starts on b2. Any problem that features a pawn moving from its starting square to promotion in the course of the solution is now said to demonstrate the ''Excelsior'' theme. Nowadays it is most usually shown in

helpmate A helpmate is a type of chess problem in which both sides cooperate in order to achieve the goal of checkmating Black. In a helpmate in ''n'' moves, Black moves first, then White, each side moving ''n'' times, to culminate in White's ''nth'' mov ...

s and

seriesmover A ''seriesmover'' is a chess problem in which one side makes a series of legal moves without reply at the end of which the other side makes a single move, giving checkmate or yielding stalemate, depending on the precise stipulation. Checks canno ...

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Excelsior (Chess Problem) Chess problems 1861 in chess