In 'Kurioses Schach' wird angemerkt, daß es sich hier um eine Variation handelt.
Alfred Pfeiffer: Eine solche Aufgabe ist in FCR 12/1942 nicht enthalten! (2015-10-26)
A.Buchanan: Mysterious. If this one didn't appear in FCR 12/1942 then was it effectively anticipated by P1211899 which did appear then? Fabel was German and this was a British magazine. Weren't communications between the two countries limited in 1942? (2015-10-26)
Yoav Ben-Zvi: An identical position is reprinted in "The Problemist", January 1976 stating that it was published in Zadachy v Etudi 1/1963 with the straight-forward stipulation "Is the position possible?". A version with the 2 a pawns and 2 h pawns each advanced by one square (delaying but not avoiding retro-stalemate) was published as number 34 in "Introduction to Retrograde-Analysis" by Nikolay Beluhov. The intended solution is as follows: The last capture could not have been played by any of the pieces on the board so the piece that made the last capture must itself have been captured later, a contradiction proving the position is illegal. For a discussion of the mathematical nature of this argument see P0002611. Unfortunately the sophisticated argument is not really needed because the position is in Retro-Stalement (in Beluhov's version, close to it). (2017-12-24)
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