The New Year has sped in with a bang. The holidays are over and it's back to work and back to school.

We hope your "work" will include your checker game, and to that end we have a speed problem provided by regular contributors Josh and Lloyd Gordon of Toronto. We won't run our Javascript clock this time, as we think you should be allowed at least a minute or two to solve it. We'll even give you a hint: Read the first sentence of this column again.

WHITE

BLACK
Black to Play and Win

B:WK11,13,17,18,21,28,30:B5,6,9,12,19,K27,K31.

Can you rush to a solution and work out the winning moves? When you've got it, click on Read More to see the solution.

Solution

12-16 11x20 19-24 28x19 27-24 20x27 31x22 Black Wins---A.

A---A likely continuation is 17-14 9x18 21-17 6-10 30-26 22x31 17-14 10x17 13-9 5x14.