Chessboard Puzzles

Part 4: Other Surfaces

and Variations
Dan Freeman
April 27, 2014

Villanova University
MAT 9000 Graduate Math Seminar
Any Questions from Last Time?

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 Introduction

• In the first three presentations, we looked at

the concepts chessboard domination,
chessboard independence and the knight’s tour
• Tonight we will conclude this series of
presentations with a look at these three
concepts on non-regular surfaces
• We will also touch on a few other concepts
associated with chessboard mathematics

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 Knight Movement
• Recall that knights move two squares in one
direction (either horizontally or vertically) and
one square in the other direction
• Knights’ moves resemble an L shape
• Knights are the only pieces that are allowed to
jump over other pieces
• In the example below, the white and black
knights can move to squares with circles of the
corresponding color

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 Knight’s Tour Revisited

• A knight’s tour is a succession of moves made

by a knight that traverse every square on a
chessboard once and only once
• There are two kinds of knight’s tours, a closed
knight’s tour and an open knight’s tour:
– A closed knight’s tour is one in which the knight’s last
move in the tour places it a single move away from
where it started
– An open knight’s tour is one in which the knight’s last
move in the tour places it on a square that is not a
single move away from where it started

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 Toroidal Chessboard
• A torus is a donut-shaped surface in which
both the rows and columns wrap around

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 Knight’s Tour on a Torus
• In 1997, John Watkins and his student, Becky
Hoenigman, proved the remarkable result that
every rectangular chessboard has a closed
knight’s tour* on a torus
1 16 7 22 13 4 19 10
Knight’s Tour on
20 11 2 17 8 23 14 5
3x8 Torus
15 6 21 12 3 18 9 24

1 11 3 13 5 15 7 17 9

Knight’s Tour on 29 19 27 35 25 33 23 31 21
4x9 Torus 10 2 12 4 14 6 16 8 18

20 28 36 26 34 24 32 22 30

*Hereafter, a knight’s tour will be used to refer to a closed knight’s tour

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 Knight’s Tour on a Cylinder
• Unlike a torus, a cylinder only wraps in one
dimension, not both
• In 2000, John Watkins proved that a knight’s
tour exists on an mxn cylindrical chessboard
unless one of the following two conditions
holds:
1) m = 1 and n > 1; or
2) m = 2 or 4 and n is even
• Here is why the above cases are excluded:
– If m = 1, a knight can’t move at all
– If m = 2 and n is even, then each move would take
the knight left or right by two columns and so then
only at most half of the columns would be visited
– If m = 4 and n is even, then the coloring argument by
Louis Pósa from the last presentation holds
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 Klein Bottle
• The Klein bottle operates like a torus, except
when wrapping horizontally, the rows reverse
order

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 Knight’s Tour on Klein Bottle
• Just like with the torus, every rectangular
chessboard has a knight’s tour on a Klein bottle
• Examples of knight’s tours on 6x2 and 6x4
Klein bottles are below

Knight’s Tour on Knight’s Tour on

6x2 Klein Bottle 6x4 Klein Bottle
1 4 1 4 22 19

9 12 15 18 12 9

5 2 5 2 20 23

11 8 17 14 8 11

3 6 3 6 24 21

7 10 13 16 10 7

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 Möbius Strip
• A Möbius strip is like a cylinder in that it only
wraps in one dimension but is distinguished by
the half-twist it makes when wrapping, like the
Klein bottle

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 Knight’s Tour on Möbius Strip

• A knight’s tour exists on a Mobius strip unless

one or more of the following three conditions
hold:
1) m = 1 and n > 1; or n = 1 and m = 3, 4 or 5;
2) m = 2 or 4 and n is even
3) n = 4 and m = 3

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 Queens Domination on a Torus
• The queens domination numbers on both a
regular board and a torus for 1 ≤ n ≤ 10 appear
in the table below
• Note that the only case where the two numbers
differ is n = 8.
n γ(Qnxn) γtor(Qnxn)
1 1 1
2 1 1
3 1 1
4 2 2
5 3 3
6 3 3
7 4 4
8 5 4
9 5 5
10 5 5
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 Knights Domination on a Torus
• The knights domination numbers on both a
regular board and a torus for 1 ≤ n ≤ 8 appear
in the table below
• Note that, shockingly, the value for γtor is lower
for n = 8 than it is for n = 7!
• Also, each value of γtor is unique up to n = 8.
This may or may not be the case in general.
n γ(Nnxn) γtor(Nnxn)
1 1 1
2 4 2
3 4 3
4 4 4
5 5 5
6 8 6
7 10 9
8 12 8 14
 Rooks Domination on a Torus

• Since it doesn’t make any difference whether a

rook is on a regular board or on a torus, it
follows that γ(Rnxn) = γtor(Rnxn) = n

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 Bishops Domination on a Torus
• Since the number of distinct diagonals in either
direction drops from 2n – 1 to n on a torus, it is
easy to see that γtor(Bnxn) = n, just like
γ(Bnxn) = n
n Distinct Diagonals on
a Torus Shown in Red

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 Kings Domination on a Torus
• γtor(Knxn) = ┌(n / 3)*┌ n / 3 ┐┐
• γtor(Kmxn) = max{┌(m / 3)*┌ n / 3 ┐┐,
┌(n / 3)*┌m / 3 ┐┐}

9 Kings Dominating a 7 Kings Dominating a

Regular 7x7 Board 7x7 Torus

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 Kings Independence on a Torus
• The formulas for the kings independence
number on a torus are analogous to those for
the kings domination number
• βtor(Knxn) = └(½*n)*└½*n┘┘
• βtor(Kmxn) = min{└(½*m)*└ ½*n ┘┘,
└(½*n)*└ ½*m ┘┘}

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 n-queens Problem on Cylinder
• A formula for βcyl(Qnxn) has not yet been found
• While βcyl(Q5x5) = β(Q5x5) = 5 and βcyl(Q7x7) =
β(Q7x7) = 7, βcyl(Q8x8) = 6 ≠ β(Q8x8) = 8
• The picture below shows why 8 queens fail to
be independent on an 8x8 cylinder

8 Queens Fail to Be
Independent on 8x8 Cylinder

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 Independent Domination Number
• The independent domination number for a
given piece P and a given mxn chessboard is
the minimum size of an independent
dominating set, denoted i(Pmxn)
• i(Pmxn) need not equal γ(Pmxn) or β(Pmxn), as
shown in the examples below for queens on a
4x4 board

γ(Q4x4) = 2 i(Q4x4) = 3 β(Q4x4) = 4

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 Irredundance Number
• An irredundant set of chess pieces is one in
which each piece in the set either occupies a
square that is not covered by another piece or
else it covers a square that no other piece
covers
• A maximal irredundant set is one that is not a
proper subset of any irredundant set
• The irredundance number for a given piece P
and a given mxn chessboard is the minimum
size of a maximal irredundant set

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 Irredundance Number
• Both the set of 9 kings on the left-hand board
and the set of 16 kings on the right-hand board
are maximal irredundant sets

Maximal Irredundant Maximal Irredundant

Set of 9 Kings Set of 16 Kings

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 Total Domination Number
• W.W. Rouse Ball introduced the concept of
total domination in 1987
• The total domination number is the minimum
number of pieces of a given type P on a given
mxn chessboard that are required to attack
every square on the board, including occupied
ones

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 Total Domination Number
• Ball showed the total domination number on an
8x8 chessboard to be 5 for queens, 10 for
bishops, 14 for knights and 8 for rooks
• An arrangement of 5 queens totally dominating
an 8x8 board is given below
Five Queens Totally
Dominating 8x8 Board

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 Sources Cited
• J.J. Watkins. Across the Board: The Mathematics of
Chessboard Problems. Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 2004.

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