Thanks to jdyer who posted in the comments that these chess challenges from the Da Vinci Code Quest on Google are a common form of chess problem known as “helpmates.” I’ve done some quick research and turned up some more information on helpmates. Wikipedia has a good article on helpmates and its variations. In fact, it seems that the puzzles in the Da Vinci Code Quest are a slight varition since traditionally black moves first in a helpmate.
Chess Base also has a great article on helpmates that provides some of the history of the problem. Helpmates were invented by Samuel Loyd in 1860. The first helpmate puzzle was published in Chess Monthly in November of 1860. The long history of this puzzle should perhaps make those of us who were complaining about it feel bad. For anyone who doesn’t care much about history but would like to understand better how the puzzle works, I will direct you to an article by Chris Feather on the British Chess Problem Society site. The article walks you through several problems providing tips on how to solve them.
[...] ChessBase has put together a few puzzles for Christmas this year. They posted 1 per day from Christmas until New Year’s and all 8 are currently available. The puzzles all involve chess, but they’re impressively different. One puzzle involves a chess variation called losing chess and there are standard chess puzzles such as selfmate or helpmate. Tags: chess puzzles Posted by Josh in Types/Variations, Website (Wednesday January 3, 2007 at 11:33 pm) [...]