Hopefully, some of you got a chance to watch the spectacular aurora borealis northern lights on Saturday night, which was seen by millions around the world, as far south as Florida. The light display was caused by a number of powerful Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that were lobbed by the Sun straight at earth a day earlier.
Luckily, there were no disruptions of communications, the electric power grid or satellite operations, which earlier such storms have caused.
There must be millions of photographs of the light show displayed on social media. Here are a few artistic one which bring out the pink colors of the aurora (the pinks are due to Nitrogen molecules lower in altitude than Oxygen atoms which glow in green).
Now let’s bring out the beauty in today’s puzzle composed by British Chess composer Percy Francis Blake (1873 -1936) in 1898.
P.S.
The chess puzzle is published on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. ET.
It is customary for advanced players to wait till midnight ET before posting the full solution. Before then, they provide some stats about the solution (e.g., the minimum number of distinct checkmate moves), help guide others, and sometimes post hints. But there are no hard-and-fast rules; feel free to post comments as you please.