Werner Keym News Today

On August 6th, to celebrate GM Helmut Pfleger's eightieth birthday, octogenarian puzzle master Werner Keym submitted two very clever little problems in two German newspapers. The puzzles, which had a unique form of birthday greetings encoded into them, were not at all easy to work out. Today we bring you the solutions.

He is one of our earliest friends in chess, a personality that has done more for German chess than anyone we know. He started as the country's most talented young player, became a grandmaster, a medical doctor, but continued to promote the game in numerous chess columns and TV shows. Today he turns eighty, and is still going strong. In our article we also include some unique problems that another octogenarian composed for his coeval colleague. | Photo Nadja Wittmann

Exactly 70 years ago today, on May 29, 1953, the world's highest mountain, Everest, was climbed for the first time – a heroic feat, exuberantly celebrated by all. Today, hundreds scale the mountain each year. 40 years ago the Mount Everest of problem chess, the daunting Babson task, which for a century had seemed quite impossible to do, was mastered for the first time. Today new versions appear regularly. Here are some of the best. It's great fun checking the symmetrical underpromotion...

Free association is an interesting mechanism to make up introductions for articles. Let us try: "Music was my first love and it will be my last", John Miles sang many years ago. The "Children" of Caissa rather would see their "Circle of Life" in Chess, where the WCCT-7 theme might have been predicted by Phil Collins in "Against All Odds" (who also performed the song named in the previous quotation): "Take a look at me now! There's just an empty sp...

Last Tuesday Werner Keym, one of the most creative problemists we know, turned 80, and we celebrated his birthday with samples from his book "Anything but Average". Today we give you the solutions to the truly unique problems, hoping you enjoyed them and were able to come up with the solutions yourself.

Werner Keym is a teacher (of French and Latin) and a musician who has organised more than 300 concerts in his town. In 2010, he ran for Mayor of Meisenheim and won in a landslide. Now in retirement he devotes his time to the family — he has six grandchildren — and to his hobbies. The foremost of them is problem chess, where he is the is one of the most creative problemists we know. Today he turns 80, and we celebrate with samples of his work. Prepare for an hour of fun.

€29.90 Study of the Month: April 2021 What is an ‘endgame study’? By definition, it is (unless an author specifies otherwise) a position in which White wins or draws in exactly one way. How do you know that there is exactly one way? Endgame tablebases (EGTB) are a proof, but unlike many other genres, there is no way to use brute force or heuristically solve an endgame study to find a complete proof of it being correct. That is where cook hunters come in. A cook is an inco...