FRIDAY'S KILLER QUESTION: A hybrid game of chess and dominoes

11 February 2011

1 minute read

FRIDAY'S KILLER QUESTION: A hybrid game of chess and dominoes

On alternate Friday afternoons we are posting cryptic questions from 7city Learning. Add your answers in the comments box at the bottom of the page. Approbation will be given to the person who provides the correct answer first. We'll add the official answer to the bottom of this article on Monday afternoon.

You have a traditional chessboard, eight by eight square.

From a single diagonal, any diagonal, you remove two squares.

The board now has just 62 squares.

You also have 31 domino tiles, each of which is conveniently the same size as two of the chessboard squares.

Is it possible to cover the board with these dominoes?

AUTHOR7cityLearning

Insider Comment

Bi
Biffa
11 March 2011
No. Imagine the case that the chessboard is covered with dominoes BEFORE the squares are removed.
Now the question is equivalent to asking if I can remove a single domino by removing two diagonal squares.
Its obvious that I can because however I have covered the board no domino can be oriented diagonally.
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ab
abanerji
25 February 2011
No.
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AA
AA
13 February 2011
hooker stop embarrassing yourself with this nonsense, it can't be done as the first guy said and as simple googling will reveal. Wish 7city could come up with original interesting problems instead of widely published stuff from days of yore.
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ho
hooker
12 February 2011
Yes! But its awfully more difficult to describe how in words. Here it goes...
Start from a black square corner and remove the nearest two white diagonal squares. That black corner square will shift to become a neighbour to another black square. So this give a configuration of 7 tiles in that row, and also the row above it.
The configuration of the board can be broken into two segments
1) 6x8 - which requires 24 domino tiles
2) 2x7 - which requires 7 domino tiles
Total: 31 domino tiles
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An
Angus
11 February 2011
It can't be done. A domino would have to cover one white and one black square. Because you remove 2 squares of the same colour, ie from a diagonal, the dominos therefore won't be able to cover the remaining squares.
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