Chess Solitaire

So the site I do the tents and mosaic puzzles has several more logic puzzle types. One of them is chess related.

They're not tactic puzzles (what one usually thinks of chess puzzles). Instead, you have chess pieces on a board, can only perform capture moves and habe to remain with a single piece. Solitaire is the core one, with solo chess having additional rules of a single piece moving only twice and the king has to remain at the end.

To describe these chess puzzle in a single word, I would say "weird."

Why? Well, while they work differently than usually chess, the familiarity with chess pieces and having played chess over a decade certainly helps out. Very interesting geometry usages, mattering of move orders etc.

But what makes them so weird is how one is able to solve them:

Either you solve them in an instant (seeing the solution immediately), have to do quick check (first intuition was wrong, but you figure out instantly after that how), or you're stuck for minutes.

There is no inbetween. Either instant or minutes of breaking your mind. Getting a good average time seems more like luck (of course, less luck needed when you get more experience in it), which it isn't per se.

I guess this is one thing that made chess one of the most known and played board games. It's hard. Easy rules, but incredibely deep and complex. And these (not tactical) chess puzzles certainly force you to get deep into calculating variations—or rather trying out all the moves in your mind except of course for the correct one.

It's at times really frustrating. Mosaic puzzles has like two to four strategies to look out for, you just have to find and apply them. Can't see anything right now? Move to another place. In tents, you have all kind of simple to more complex strategies. Can't find anything? Use more deduction, and then you can move on.

And these chess puzzles? Well, if you can't see the solution immediately, good luck ever finding it. There is deduction, but they barely help. You're just stuck with this position.

To add a certain detail about my frustration, I only started doing these chess puzzles since two days. I'm technically a newbie, even if my chess experiences help out a lot in them. I guess my familiarity in chess and yet this infigurable puzzles is what frustrates me on them. It's like trying to solve chess studies, which are somehow also very hard despite being actual chess.

Well, I'll see how my experience with this puzzle will go. While frustrating, I still like them somehow and intend to climb up the leaderboard. I have at them some chances, cause if I see the solution instantly, then it's more a matter of mouse speed (which I suck sadly. I never noticed how chess sites like Lichess "auto-aim" for you, where here I missclick badly so often). And I guess not many play the big puzzles, so I have especially chances there (The only problem with big ones: Once you're stuck with one, they're even more time-consuming, frustrating and annoying)