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Episcopal puzzling, September 22, 2023Andrew Schultz has by this point created quite the collection of IF chess puzzlers – this is I think the fifth one I’ve played and reviewed? There are commonalities between all of them, of course: most notably, they’re all impeccably presented, with multiple helpful ways of displaying the board, accessibility options and hints to allow for maximum ease of play, and a light but engaging patina of story adding some narrative sugar to what could otherwise be dry exercises in logic. Impressively, while XOU is no exception, it doesn’t feel like a retread – unlike the earlier games, which hinged on proper piece placement or clever pawn-promotion tricks, or started out with the player on the back foot, here we’ve got a classic but tricky endgame scenario: the player’s got to achieve checkmate with only their two bishops.
It’s a well-chosen setup because it allows for a fun narrative layer, hinging on the difficulties of getting the bishop-who-only-goes-on-white-squares and the bishop-who-only-goes-on-black-squares to put their differences aside and work together. It also makes for a deceptively challenging puzzle. With the opponent having only a king to their name, you’re obviously in no danger, but it’s surprisingly easy for them to slip through your offense and force a stalemate – or even, since you can only defend your bishops with your king, knock out one of your pieces (this is still just a stalemate, of course, but it’s a much more humiliating way to go down).
As I’ve mentioned in my previous reviews of this series of games, I’m no chess maven but I’ve generally found a way to muddle through. That’s technically the case here too, though I’ll have to cop to rather more muddle than usual. It didn’t take me too long to crack the first phase of the puzzle, and it was fun to scissor my bishops past each other until they pinned the enemy king against the edge of the board. The process of herding the king into the corner for mate, though, was a much harder nut to crack, involving a forward-and-back pas de trois that I only groped my way towards through a whole lot of trial and error – somehow keeping track of all those diagonals was very taxing on my poor brain. When looking back at the solution in retrospect, it’s lovely and elegant, but it sure didn’t feel that way at the time.
That’s probably more an indication that I’ve found my level as a chess dilettante than a real critique of the game, though – and I’m guessing that for those with more familiarity with the game of kings, this stepped-up difficulty could well be a selling point. My favorite of these games remains You Won’t Get Her Back, which I think nailed a sweet spot in terms of difficulty while also having the cleverest marriage of gameplay and narrative, but XOU is a worthy addition to the collection too – if the concept seems at all appealing, you really can’t go wrong.