{"id":22854,"date":"2025-04-04T20:41:39","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T02:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-again\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:18:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:18:53","slug":"new-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-again\/","title":{"rendered":"New again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Five-thousand and four-hundred and ninety-eight years ago, just as the night\u2019s sky lightened with the first tinge of navy before the morning, Pharaoh Thutmose III directed Egypt\u2019s forces to attack the Canaanite rebels near Megiddo, which is in modern-day Syria.<\/p>\n

This was the first recorded battle in history, as documented in the hieroglyphics in the Hall of Annals in Luxor. The Egyptians routed the Canaanites in a crossfire of arrows and phalanxes.<\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s position, if black doesn\u2019t sleep in and seizes the moment. Black, like the Egyptians, can rout white with a deadly crossfire. With this hint in mind, please try to find black\u2019s winning move.<\/p>\n

White\u2019s bishop blocks black\u2019s bishop line of fire on the white king. White\u2019s queen bolsters its bishop. As strong as white\u2019s bishop is, it cannot vacate the a8-h1 diagonal because black\u2019s bishop on b7 pins it to the white king. Black exploits this pin with queen to f5. This creates a new pin.<\/p>\n

White\u2019s bishop cannot capture the queen because it\u2019s pinned to the a8-h1 diagonal. Meanwhile, the black bishop and queen have ganged up on white\u2019s bishop. Its only escape is to capture black\u2019s bishop which is en prise. But this allows black\u2019s queen to snatch white\u2019s queen. Not an even trade (see next diagram).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

White\u2019s best move is to release the bishop pin and move its king to g1. But that loses, too, after black\u2019s bishop takes white\u2019s bishop. Now black\u2019s bishop-queen battery fires down the f5-b1 diagonal and next wins white\u2019s rook after the white queen escapes (see next diagram)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

Those Canaanites that survived the crossfire 5,500 hundred years ago fled to Megiddo and held a siege before surrendering. This tactic of attacking from several angles \u2013 in this instance a bishop \u2013 is literally as old as recorded history. Everything old is new again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

move and win<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77880,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22854\/revisions\/77880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22854"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}