Monday 6 June 2016

Meson Chess Problem database - new facilities

When I gave my website a makeover I added a couple of new facilities to my Meson Chess Problem Database.

There is now a facility to search by Problem Identifier (PID), useful if someone sends you one. Of course, you can still send or receive a link to the actual page with the problem on it.

More notable is the addition, on the general search page, of a facility to retrieve problems within three ranges of number of pieces used. The three ranges are Miniature (less than 8 pieces), Meredith (less than 13 pieces) and Heavy, all the rest. Meredith is a term named after a famous American chess composer of that name.

Since putting the new website live I have been using my new Kalulu chess problem testing program to generate and add solutions to some of the mates in 4 and 5 in the database. These solutions are in a slightly different format to the mates in 2 and 3, which are generated via a Java program when they are added. Each time I do update work on the database, I generate more solutions, but I don't know how long it will take for them all to be added. There are plans to add solutions to problems other than directmates, but as I haven't yet built that facility into Kululu, I can't say when that will be. In due course I will replace the solutions generated by the Java program with solutions generated by Kalulu.

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