Welcome to our junior chess Christmas quiz.

This year’s Christmas quiz features lots of different quizzical questions and chess puzzles to test your
knowledge. What you can be certain of – they all relate to chess in one way or another!

Please submit your answers to [email protected] by 4th January 2020. We will
announce the winners in January.

Question 1. A warm up question

In the Christmas nativity scene

which chess piece came to visit the baby Jesus bearing gifts

(in fact more than one came)?

Question 2. White to mate in 2 moves.

What are White and Black’s moves?

Question 3. Which two pieces (combined) move closest to the same way as the queen?

• King and pawn

   

• Rook and pawn

   

• Bishop and pawn

   

• Rook and bishop
  

Question 4. How many of these chess words can you find in the word search below?

The words may appear horizontally, vertically or diagonally.

Question 5. White to play and mate in 3 moves. What are White and Black’s
moves? (This is known as Damiano’s mate)

Question 6. How many of the chess pieces have legal moves on the first move?
And which are they?

Question 7: What is White’s best move after Black plays g6?

Question 8. What do we call the rows on a chess board?

Question 9. To be awarded the Grandmaster title, what minimum ELO rating must a player have had at some point in their career?

Question 10. White to play and mate in 4.

What are white and blacks moves?

Question 11. Find the white rook’s way through the maze

In this rook maze, white has to move the rook consecutively until it captures the black king.

It is not allowed to capture any black pieces and cannot move to squares that are attacked by black pieces.

The rook can capture the king in 8 moves – can you find your way through the maze?

Question 12. How many reindeer does Santa have and which chess piece is worth this amount?

Question 13. Black to play – and then White to mate in 3.

What can Black play that will only allow White to mate in three moves?

This is a tricky puzzle!

Question 14. Helpmate!

Black has to make the worst possible move, helping White to deliver checkmate on White’s next move!

So what is Black’s move, and what will be White’s reply?

Question 15. Who was the victor in the Chess game between space and
earth played on June 9, 1970?

• Space

   

• Earth
  

   

• The game never finished

   

• Draw

We hope you enjoyed this quiz.

We always welcome new juniors of all levels and volunteers, so please contact the B&DCL and DCCA junior chess coordinator, Nikki Forster at [email protected] if you wish to find out more on any junior chess matters or check out the Dorset Junior chess webpage https://www.dorsetchess.co.uk/junior-chess/

Many thanks to the UK Chess Challenge Team for use of some of its fun puzzles (4, 11 & 14).