Puzzle Walk Part 1: Puzzles from the 1830s

This post is a continuation of delving into chess author George Walker's body of work (1803 – 1879). 

There are quite a few interesting chess puzzles in his books and I will translate 11 of them here into modern format for people to enjoy. For more information on Mr. Walker see my previous post. 

These puzzles are coming from 2 books (available via archive.org and Google Books):

• "New Treatise on Chess" - 1832
• "Chess Made Easy" - 1837

Chess Made Easy Puzzle

The first comes from "Chess Made Easy" and Walker himself attributes it to his predecessor in chess authorship Giambattista Lolli (1698 – 1769 ). This one was actually presented to readers as an image and so it was much easier to translate than some of the others I will share. (Just know that the pieces on c1 and g5 are queens and not bishops ! I made that mistake at first and was confused).

So you get this:

• White to Play, mate in 7
• Solution

New Treatise on Chess Puzzles

The remaining puzzles come from "New Treatise on Chess" and I did not have the benefit of rendered images. I had to translate them from the old descriptive notation used at the time. So I tried my best but mistakes may have been made.  

I have the first 10 below (out of 50) and will translate more in future post.

Example from the book of a chess problem in old descriptive notation :

Puzzles 1-10 :

Puzzle 1:

• Mate in 3
• Solution

Puzzle 2:

• Mate with a5 pawn in 4 moves
  • there are faster mates but the author wants a mate with the a5 pawn.
• Text Solution

Puzzle 3:

• Mate in 4
• Solution

Puzzle 4:

• Mate in 5 with c3 pawn.
  
  • another puzzle where the author wants a fancy pawn mate, but there is a faster mate in 4 on the board
• Text Solution
• Fastest Solution

Puzzle 5:

• White to mate in 5 or
• Black to mate in 3
• White Solution
• Black Solution

Puzzle 6:

• White to draw (5 moves)
• Text Solution

Puzzle 7:

• Mate in 5
  • some moves are non forcing so black has several move options available, but no way to prolong the move past 5.
• Solution

Puzzle 8:

• White to checkmate in 5
  • puzzle requires every move to be a check, so players alternate checks
  • There are faster mates if you ignore that stipulation
• Text Solution
• Fastest solution (ignoring puzzle stipulations above)

Puzzle 9:

• This is a strange puzzle, and I had to read the fine print to understand what was going on, but the intent is for white to force black to checkmate white with the pawn that starts on d7 in 5 moves.
  • White has mate in 1 almost the whole time but that is not the point of the puzzle
• Text Solution

Puzzle 10:

• White to mate in 6 moves
• Solutions
  • 2 paths to mate in 6 with best play from black