The grasshopper is a

fairy chess piece A fairy chess piece, variant chess piece, unorthodox chess piece, or heterodox chess piece is a chess piece not used in conventional chess but incorporated into certain chess variants and some chess problems. Compared to conventional pieces, fair ...

that moves along , , and (as a

queen Queen or QUEEN may refer to: Monarchy * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom ** List of queens regnant * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...

) but only by hopping over another piece. The piece to be hopped may be any distance away, but the grasshopper must land on the square immediately behind it in the same direction. If there is no piece to hop over, it cannot move. If the square beyond a piece is occupied by a piece of the opposite color, the grasshopper can capture that piece. The grasshopper may jump over pieces of either color; the piece being jumped over is unaffected. The grasshopper was introduced by T. R. Dawson in 1913 in problems published in the ''Cheltenham Examiner'' newspaper. It is one of the most popular fairy pieces used in

chess problem A chess problem, also called a chess composition, is a puzzle set by the composer using chess pieces on a chess board, which presents the solver with a particular task. For instance, a position may be given with the instruction that White is to ...

s. In this article, the grasshopper is shown as an inverted queen with notation ''G''.

Movement

In the diagram to the right, the white grasshopper on d4 can move to the squares marked with crosses (b2, d1, d7, and h8) or capture the black pawn on a7. It cannot move to g4, as there are two pieces to hop over.

Example problem

Solution: :1. Gh3 Gh4 2. Gh5 Gh6 3. Gh7 Gh8 4.Ge7 Gd7 5. Gc7 Gb7 6. Ga7+ Ga6 7. Ga5+ Ga4 8. Ga3

Related pieces

Other related pieces in the problemist tradition are the eagle, hamster, moose, and sparrow, which move and capture like the grasshopper but are deflected (to either side) 90°, 180°, 45°, and 135°, respectively, upon passing the hurdle.

References

Bibliography

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External links

Piececlopedia: Grasshopper
by

Hans Bodlaender Hans Leo Bodlaender (born April 21, 1960) is a Dutch computer scientist, a professor of computer science at Utrecht University. Bodlaender is known for his work on graph algorithms and parameterized complexity and in particular for algorithms rela ...

, ''

The Chess Variant Pages ''The Chess Variant Pages'' is a non-commercial website devoted to chess variants. It was created by Hans Bodlaender in 1995. The site is "run by hobbyists for hobbyists" and is "the most wide-ranging and authoritative web site on chess variants" ...