It's a Puzzlement: Trading Places
	Make your moves.

by John P. Robertson

The board in the diagram above contains four white bishops and four black bishops, which move only along diagonal paths. The object of the puzzle is to maneuver the pieces so that the four white bishops trade places with the four black bishops, with no captures possible during the transfer. In other words, a white bishop and a black bishop may not occupy the same diagonal at any time. Successive moves with the same color are allowed. How do you do it?

An interactive version of this puzzle can be downloaded from http://www.exeter.edu/~rparris/default.html. This is the "Peanut Software" site, hosted by Phillips-Exeter Academy. Look for the program "Winarc." Other puzzles are included within Winarc, and other puzzles and mathematical programs are available at the site (Used with permission).

Allan Bell's Double-Crostic

The solution to the previous puzzlement is: "In many states, the power to regulate rates has been transformed into the power to substitute the wisdom of a regulator for the wisdom of the marketplace. Revisions made by regulators show a clear bias in favor of rate suppression." This is from a letter to the editor titled "In Criticism of Rate Regulation" by James F. Perry, Best's Review Property/Casualty, January 1995 (Used with permission).

There was one error in the final puzzle. The word "suppression" was misspelled in the puzzle as "supression."

There was also some controversy over the spelling of "Guenevere," with some solvers suggesting this should be "Guinevere." Different sources spell this name different ways. Allan's source was the spelling on the record jacket for the Broadway cast recording of the Lerner and Loewe musical, Camelot. Charlie Hewitt checked the Library of Congress for references to each spelling, finding Guinevere 77 times and Guenevere 43 times. Charlie also notes an interesting coincidence. Julie Andrews played Guenevere on Broadway, and, according to one version of the Arthurian legend, Guenevere entered a nunnery following her affair with Sir Lancelot. Later Andrews played Maria in The Sound of Music. Maria leaves a nunnery to be the governess for the Von Trapp family, eventually marrying Captain Von Trapp.

Solutions were sent in by Mary Ellen Carolascia, Ann Conway, Ken Creighton, Todd Dashoff, John Herder, Charlie Hewitt, Walter Hosford and Mary Hosford (jointly), Paul Ivanovskis, Richard Kollmar, Maffie Maramot, George Morison, Melissa Neidlinger, Ray Niswander and Thomas Schadler (jointly), Randy S. Nordquist, Julie Normand, and Charles Petrizzi.