1 A Brief Introduction to the Mathematics of …（1简要介绍的数学u2026）.pdf

1 A Brief Introduction to the Mathematics of Chess Puzzles Puzzles on the chessboard have long been studied by mathematicians. Nat- urally, we do not restrict ourselves only to the standard 8 8 chessboard. Gen- eralizations are quickly made to the square board, the rectangular board, etc. We will concentrate on three types of problems. 2 The Knightís Tour The closed knightís tour of a chessboard is a classic problem in mathematics. Can the knight use legal moves to visit every square on the board and return to its starting position? When translated into graph theoretic terms, this is equivalent to the existence of a Hamiltonian cycle. The unique movement of the knight makes a tour an interesting existence problem. For other chess pieces, tours are a trivial existence problem. Moves of the Knight 1 A Closed Knightís Tour of the 8 8 Chessboard While originally studied for the standard board, the problem is easily gen- eralized to rectangular boards. 1 4 7 26 13 28 11 22 19 16 6 25 2 29 8 23 14 17 10 21 3 30 5 24 27 12 9 20 15 18 A Closed Knightís Tour of the 3 10 Chessboard 2 1 22 27 12 7 16 28 11 30 15 26 13 21 2 23 8 17 6 10 29 4 19 14 25 3 20 9 24 5 18 A Closed Knightís Tour of the 5 6 Chessboard In 1991 Schwenk [1] completely answered the question: Which rectangular chessboards have a knightís tour? Theorem 1 (Schwenk) An m n chessboard with m n ha