❤ PUZZLES: A tsumego a day keeps the doctor away

My so-called solution was wrong. :grin:

I made a demo board. Original solution leaves many possible effective moves for black, but he just can’t move elsewhere:

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Well then, here are today’s puzzles. The first two aren’t too hard and very recognisable.
Know and recognise these shapes and climb on the kyu scale.

Black to play.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS

Black to play.

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Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS

Black to play.

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Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS

Black to play.

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Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS
Double snapback! Damezumari in optima forma.

Black to play. Eliminate White.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


Black to begin.
Ladders are fun (unless you fall down one).

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Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


Black to play.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


Black to play. Okay, now show me what you are made of.

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Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS

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I wanted to use brute force with this, in order to count how many variations I should check in mind to solve it.
I made a demo board to do that.

I solved it, but the conclusion of my experiment is: I just can’t keep all that *** together in my head at a time! :grin:

For me intuition is necessary to avoid branches.
But if intuition brings me to a dead end, I’m f***.

Hahaha :joy:
I’m made of jelly!
I just noticed some aji in the corner, then followed all the hints and then… I asked myself: “Who’s dead now?”

The solution could be a valid puzzle for me! :joy:

I think this one’s in the early problems of Cho Chikun’s Elementary Encyclopedia of Life & Death.

It’s certainly one of the classics.

The Japanese word ダメ詰まり, which is often translated as “shortage of liberties”, rests on the kanji 詰 which Jisho defines as “packed, close, pressed, reprove, rebuke, blame”. Here, 詰 seems to be pronounced ず zu.

I think we can consider the word as dame (liberty) zumari (shortage).

In the British Go Journal at least, I’ve noticed a gradual integration of the words. They first, for a couple of decades or so from 1967, used dame zumari, then for a while dame-zumari, and now damezumari.

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What a coincidence! Just a few minutes I was wondering if it was tsumego or tsume go.
Just the same contraction as in damezumari / dame zumari.

Do you know - with your obvious linguistic fascination :slight_smile: - which one is correct?

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Behind one intuition hides another intuition.

I don’t think there is a “correct” or “incorrect” way, as long as the split words are correctly split.

So dame zumari appears as fine as damezumari, but I think we could say damezu mari is a flawed transcription because zumari is one syntactic unit, which has been attached to dame.

Or so it seems to me, I’m no Japanese expert.

In tsumego, I’ve read that tsume is a loan from shogi, where it meant “(mating) problem”.
So it splits tsumego --> tsume-go --> tsume go.

Even Go tsume sounds fine as a gloss for “Go problem”, but at that point you’d just use tsume alone.

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There’s a similar question in Old English, for instance.

Take the example hran-rād, a kenning (cryptic name) for sea, from A Guide to Old English, which the authors translate as whale-road.

Both whale-road and whaleroad indicate that the word is compounded in Old English, ie. inflected as a single word; but whaleroad looks a little too cramped in Modern English.

whale road is fine in appearance and meaning, but doesn’t convey the compound nature of the word – that it’s not a genitive phrase whale’s road.

We therefore see that whale-road is more grammatically faithful than whale road and more attractive than whaleroad, and so seems the best choice, without making it the only correct option.

The kanji of 詰碁 is pronounced as tsume(詰)go(碁). It’s borrowed from ancient Chinese sources - 詰棋. The word 詰 has the meaning of questioning, investigating, digging into, etc. Just very serious asking. And 棋 is meant for all types of board games. Where 碁 is an ancient form of the same word but as the structure indicates, 碁 has 石 (a stone) as it’s root (meaning), the other part is indicating how it should pronounce.

It’s the same for 詰, the part 吉 indicate how it should be pronounced, where the other part 言, indicate it’s meaning, associated with words, the act of speaking, etc. How Japanese borrowed this phrases and broaden its original meaning is up to interpretation. Originally it just means investigating/exercising/prating how to play a board game (any board game).

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Also related to Japanese. a verb can have different state, active and being act upon, like Someone is watching (active), or something is being opened(act upon), 詰(tsu つ) め(me) 碁(go), combined means the boardgame go is being investigated.

Also, there are two different methods to pronounce kanji, especially ancient borrowed words - onyomi (音読み) and kunyomi (訓読み). Onyomi is to pronounce it as similar as to when it was first borrowed, closer to ancient Chinese pronunciation, where kunyomi pronunciation came from existing “words” of the same meaning (which might not have a written form at that time). sometimes they are quite similar or a simplified sound of the onyomi. The onyomi of 詰 is キツ (kitsu). And 詰 in ancient Chinese is probably “ki-” “gi-”, instead of the modern “jie”, where the side 吉 is still pronounced “ji”

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This is getting a bit off topic, although it is very interesting.
How about splitting and starting a new topic, called Etymology of go terms?

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Six puzzles today. :japanese_ogre:
With a lot of thinking out of the box moves.
So take a deep breath, go zen, forget about what you ever learned and approach them with an open mind.


Black to move.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


Black to move.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


White to move.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


White to move.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


Black to begin.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


Black to play.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


Nice choice. The problem 2 (connection classified 10k) was much harder to me as the last one (classified 2d)

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ah yes a classic

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You obviously have something with go puzzles (otherwise you would not be reading this). Ever thought about a career switch and become a go puzzle creator?
Well, if you want to try it out before burning all your bridges, this is the place to do it!
Feel free to post your creation here.

Black to play.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


Black to play.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


Black to play.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


Black to play.

Link

Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS


This is my first attempt at creating a go puzzle.

Black is under attack, but Black is to move.
Can Black gain a life in the corner?

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Looks dead to me :thinking:

If bR3 then wS4. If black plays anything else white cuts at R3.

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That is obvious, but if Black plays S4?

White cuts :slightly_smiling_face:

S4 R3 R2 S2 S1 R1

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