The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants
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The Piececlopedia: Windmill
Historic remarks
The windmill was invented by Alexandre Muņiz in 1997 for his game The Royal Standard,
which was his submission for the 38
challenge.
Movement rules
The windmill moves as follows: first it chooses a piece, friendly or
enemy, adjacent to itself. It can then move either clockwise or
counterclockwise around that piece, passing through empty squares
adjacent to the piece around which the windmill is moving. The windmill
can end on an enemy piece, capturing it. The windmill must end on a
square different than the one it started on.
(Note: In The Royal Standard, the adjacent piece must be a friendly
standard-bearer. However, in that game, all pieces (bishops, rook, and
standard-bearers) must move to squares adjacent to friendly
standard-bearers, so that the standard-bearer limitation is not an
intrinsic part of the windmill).
Movement diagram
In the diagram below, the windmill can move to all the squares marked by
a black circle. It can also capture the black knight. Note that it can
not return move the whole way around the rook and stop again at e4.
Windmill Helpmate Problem
In the problem below, it is Black to play and help White mate in 2. I
composed this problem myself for this page, it is a fairly simple
problem.
Written by Benjamin C Good.
WWW page created: January 12, 1999. Last modified: January 14, 1999.
Last modified: Monday, December 22, 2008
