Dr Ian Shanahan

57 Yates Avenue
Dundas Valley NSW 2117
AUSTRALIA
Sydney, 5 April 2004.
Mr Stephen Emmerson
23 Auckland Road
Reading
Berks. RG6 1NY
ENGLAND

Dear Stephen,

I trust you are keeping well! Below is another original problem for you to consider
for your Fairies column in The Problemist its a series-selfstalemate in 27, with all men being
Protean (i.e. they transform their powers into those of any units they happen to capture, always
retaining their original colour and, whenever relevant, their royalty; note, too, that for example a
white Protean man capturing a B becomes a A that marches down the board!). On the subject
of Protean men and related stipulations, I consulted several sources such as A. S. M. Dickins
A Guide to Fairy Chess and D. B. Pritchards marvellous Encyclopaedia of Chess Variants,
as well as magazines like Chessics and Variant Chess only to find a proper state of
confusion! First, there exists FrankfurterSchach which on the surface seems identical to
Protean men. However, FrankfurterSchach includes an extra rule that royal riders are
prohibited from incurring passing check i.e. crossing any squares guarded by the enemy by
analogy with the rules of castling. (Conversely, one might argue with equal consistency that
castling is peculiar to a royal regent, and so castlings rules become irrelevant when such a
piece becomes a royal bishop, say.) Secondly, nowadays, if one wants to include any royalties
in FrankfurterSchach, then one ought to stipulate FrankfurterSchach RI which would give
the game away somewhat with my problem! Third, somewhere within one of the
abovementioned references, I read about yet another variant of FrankfurterSchach whereby a
captured B turns into a A that marches up the board! So, to avoid any misunderstandings
whatsoever, I think that the straightforward stipulation Protean men is best under the present
circumstances.

Here, at last, is my new problem, composed in fact several weeks ago; I have adopted the
abbreviation R in its solution to signify royalty:

Ian Shanahan, ORIGINAL for

The Problemist.

Ser.S=27 Protean men C

1.Eb7A 2.Ae4 6.Ae8G 7.Ga8 8.Ga7E 9.Eb8 10.Ee5! (Ed6?)

11.Eb2 12.Ic3! (Id2?, Ie4?) 13.Kc2 17.Kg6 18.Kg7RA
19.RAg5 23.RAg1RC 24.RCf3! (RCe2?) 26.RCb1 27.Ib4+, Lb4RJ=.

~1~
 NB: after move 27, Ab7 guards a6 and c6, with the two As mutually blockading one another!!!
This fact is not obvious from the diagram per se, only when one considers the play that led to it.
(Hence Proteancy insinuates retroanalytic potentialities...)

Anyhow, there are several themes shown herein: (i) a lengthy rundlauf by the KRARC;
(ii) clever dual-avoidance by the I, which dictates the problems move-order; (iii) two A
excelsiors, but with each of the As marching in opposite directions! (this manoeuvre to me is
certainly witty and is something Ive never seen before, which might be specific to the genre);
and (iv) what I dub Allmetamorphosen (abbreviation: ALM), a generalization of AUW i.e.
metamorphoses, by promotion or by capture, into the five basic pieces! (Incidentally, on a
linguistic note, although Im not at all fluent in the German language it seems to me that AUW is
not the ideal terminology to signify all of the promotions: according to my small Collins Gem
German-English dictionary, umwandeln [verb] means to change or convert, whereas for
promotion [in rank] this dictionary gives Befrderung; so ... ABF instead of AUW?)

Anyway Stephen, best wishes to you and your family. Please drop me a note on a postcard
(or whatever) just to let me know about the fate of this problem; alas, I still dont have access to
e-mail... As always, I look forward to hearing from you. Cheers!

Yours faithfully,

Ian Shanahan.

~2~