Board set-up puzzle

This puzzle challenge was inspired by the recent 3 Musketeers puzzle that was posted on this forum a couple of days ago by "sometimesiplay". http://www.chess.com/forum/view/more-puzzles/protected-by-3

I tore my hair out with that one until "shoopi" came up with a clever solution. So, I decided to come up with one of my own. Here's the challenge. Set up the pieces on the chessboard so that: -

1) All of White's 16 starting pieces should be present on the board (white bishop on a white square, black bishop on a black square).

2) Each White piece should not be 'protected' by any other White piece. i.e. Any piece on the board should not be present on a square that is being guarded by another piece.

3) Every empty square on the board should be 'protected' by at least 1 White piece.

4) The position should be legal. (i.e. the position should be theoretically possible in a game). eg. no pawns on the 1st or 8th rank

5) Black's king must be present on the board and not be in check. There should be no White pieces immediately around the Black king so that it, too, is not 'protecting' any of White's pieces.

And to make it a little more interesting,

6) It's White's turn to move and White should be unable to check Black on their next move.

There is at least one solution to this puzzle that I have come up with after a couple of hours of messing around. I'll post it on here in a few days if there's any interest. I'm sure that there are many more solutions. Good luck. I can only offer a trophy for successful solutions.

Just for clarification, we can use other black pieces other than the king, right? Since otherwise it would seem impossible to do.

Sounds like a fun problem, I'll see if I can get this one..

Hi Shoopi. I managed to get a solution with the Black king being the only Black piece on the board. I actually think that its more difficult to fit any more Black pieces on the board.

Derek2468, I'm with you on that one, especially the bit about my White pieces not being protected by other pieces. Seems as if I'm forever hanging pieces in my games.

Maybe I should post my solution on the board so that the (confusing) rules that I listed above make sense?

Just figured out a way to place a queen, 2 rooks and 2 bishops while maintaining rules 2, 5 and 6. To me it's big progress :)

Well, it was really difficult. But I somehow got it. First I had to find the ideal positioning for the queen, 2 rooks and black king. The queen controls the least squares on the corner, so it was only reasonable to put her there. The black king should be on the rim, so that I could use more squares. The rooks should allow one undefended row (or column) near the queen so that I could place more pieces there efficiently (b column). The bishop on the same color of the black king was tricky, It had only 1 square where it could have been, which was just good enough. The rest of the job was fine tuning - not at all easy though. I had to swap between all the remaining pieces until finally I found a setup that works.

Outstanding work Shoopi!! Give that man (or woman?) a cigar. I didn't think anyone out there would have the skill or patience for the challenge.

I've posted the solution that I came up with further down. Its interesting how our solutions ended up having similar characteristics. An undefended row or column next to the Queen, as you mentioned. A similar set-up of the bishop, pawns and White king around the Black king to stop all checks on the next move.

Brilliant. While a queen in the corner may control less squares, a queen on e1 (or any of the other 7 symmetrical squares) allows the black king to be in the corner - in return, having more squares. Your system is perhaps even more efficient than mine.

Other than that, we did have the same characteristics in our solutions. It's a really nice set-up puzzle, and solving it did feel rewarding.

Hi all!
According to me, Shoopi's solution is debatable ;~)
...because the Ph7 can at his 1st move promote to a Queen
and thus it puts the black King in check...!

I agree! Shoopi is very clever though, can't see why he missed that! Lucky for him there is a simple fix by switching the troublesome pawn with the white king:

Hi all!
I have found a solution with 9 pions:

Hmmm .... One of the conditions is that the position must be legal and that can't be with 9 white pawns. Besides that you missed covering square a2! Which can be fixed by switching Pb3 and Bh3! After you did that you can take away any of the 9 white pawns (except a3 or c3). That gives you 7 legal positions which all conform to all of the conditions!