Aside from victory questions like “can black force a checkmate on white in 5 moves?” many novel questions can be asked about a game of chess. Some questions are trivial (e.g. “How many pieces does white have?") while more computationally challenging questions can contribute interesting results in computational complexity theory.

In this episode, Josh Brunner, Master's student in Theoretical Computer Science at MIT, joins us to discuss his recent paper Complexity of Retrograde and Helpmate Chess Problems: Even Cooperative Chess is Hard.

Works Mentioned Complexity of Retrograde and Helpmate Chess Problems: Even Cooperative Chess is Hard by Josh Brunner, Erik D. Demaine, Dylan Hendrickson, and Juilian Wellman

1x1 Rush Hour With Fixed Blocks is PSPACE Complete by Josh Brunner, Lily Chung, Erik D. Demaine, Dylan Hendrickson, Adam Hesterberg, Adam Suhl, Avi Zeff