Samuel Loyd

Samuel (Sam) Loyd (born January 30, 1841 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; † April 10, 1911 in New York) was America's most famous game inventor and puzzle specialist.

Samuel Loyd is considered one of the greatest and most famous chess composers who ever lived.

Samuel Loyd 1886
Loyd was a good chess player and took part, among other things, in the international tournament on the occasion of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867. His best historical Elo rating was 2445 in July 1870, putting him 16th in the world rankings.

However, he made a lasting name for himself primarily as a composer of chess problems, which he published in specialist magazines. According to his own statements, his interest in it arose at the age of ten. He also composed some studies, including an endgame on the subject of pawns versus bishops. He occasionally used the pseudonyms W. K. Bishop, Samuel Chapman, W. Christy, G. R. L. of Keyport, H. F. V. of Jersey City, H. F. V. of N. Y., Master Louis Keocker, W(illiam) King, A. Knight of Castleton Vt, M. R. of Cincinnati, Miss Clara S—r, T. P. C. of N. Y., W. H. of Philadelphia or W. W. of Richmond Va.

After 1870 he gradually lost interest in chess and from then on devoted himself to inventing mathematical brain games and original promotional gifts.

The Excelsior
Loyd placed great emphasis on surprising key moves in his chess compositions. He says he composed the following exercise, which was first printed in the London Era newspaper on January 13, 1861, as a 17-year-old in 1858 in the Morphy Chess Rooms in New York. It was a bet about a meal. Back then, a certain Dennis Julien always bet on being able to determine the checkmate checker in every chess problem from the outset. Loyd then offered to create a problem in which Julien only had to indicate which stone would not checkmate. “He immediately pointed to the b2 pawn as the most unlikely piece.”

The theme in which a pawn converts from the basic position is called Excelsior in the chess composition after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem of the same name, the title of which Loyd added as a motto. The poem is about a young man (“youth”) who, carrying a banner with the inscription Excelsior (“Higher!”), advances inexorably into the snow-covered Alps and dies in the process. Loyd transferred this apotheosis of the aspiring youth to the inexorably advancing farmer.

The Loyd Turton
Inspired by the idea of Turton, Loyd tried to depict Turton's maneuvers in reverse. The idea is to push back the stronger piece (here: the queen) on a line across an intersection so that the weaker piece (here: the bishop) can be placed in front of it. The Loyd-Turton, named after Loyd, is structurally much more difficult to represent than the “classic” Turton because the weaker piece usually cannot threaten checkmate.

Betting with Steinitz
Samuel Loyd
“Stuck Steinitz”
Mirror of American Sports, October 10, 1885
Checkmate in four moves.
In May 1885, Loyd told the New York Evening Telegram that he had bet world chess champion Wilhelm Steinitz that he could compose a chess problem faster than Steinitz could find the solution. He accepted and won by solving a three-move move that Loyd had composed within ten minutes in five minutes. But Loyd retaliated with the adjacent “Stuck-Steinitz” problem.

Loyd submitted this problem for a solution tournament in the Mirror of American Sports, published by his friend K. D. Peterson. In the accompanying letter published with the solution in November 1885, Loyd wrote: “There is a good joke about it that will percolate. ... I created the problem yesterday and offered Steinitz a bet that he wouldn't solve it. After half an hour he said he had found the solution. I asked him to write down the solution. He did so and I asked him to check them carefully again because if he made a mistake he would lose his bet. He spent another five minutes and then said he stood by his solution.

Loyd as a chess player
Golmayo-Loyd
Paris 1867
 

In his game against Celso Golmayo in the 1867 Paris tournament, Loyd proved that he was also looking for aesthetically pleasing combinatorial solutions in game chess.

Brain teasers

Back from the Klondike
One of his most famous puzzles is Back from the Klondike, which first appeared in the New York Journal and Advertiser on April 24, 1898.

Starting from the field marked with a heart in the middle, you move as many fields as are indicated on the starting field. You can drag in eight directions: horizontal, vertical and diagonal. The aim is to exceed the boundaries of the playing field by exactly one space at the end of a turn. The solution is possible in nine moves.

The story of how the Holetite Pencil or buttonhole puzzle came about is recorded: The head of the New York Life Insurance Company, John McCall, asked Loyd if he could design a puzzle for insurance agents for advertising purposes. This puzzle should be remembered with an advertising message. The next day, Loyd came back to McCall's and brought with him a small pen with a cord attached through a hole at one end. This formed a loop that was slightly shorter than the pin. McCall asked what that was for, and Loyd took the collar of McCall's coat and put the pin through a buttonhole and put the pin through the loop on the pin. "I'll bet you a dollar that you can't get the pin out in half an hour without cutting the cord," Loyd said. McCall spent half an hour trying in vain to remove the pin from the buttonhole, and Loyd took the dollar with the words, "I'll take that thing back from you for $10,000 in life insurance." McCall was very impressed, and the Buttonhole Puzzle became one of Loyd's most famous puzzles.

Another well-known puzzle called Trick Donkeys was similar to a puzzle involving dogs published in 1857. A drawing must be cut into three parts along dashed lines. Two parts each show a mirrored donkey. On the third part two riders can be seen sitting on part of the donkey's body. The pieces must be put together so that the two riders are sitting on the donkeys. It reportedly sold more than a billion copies.

Other well-known puzzles included Parchesi, Get Off the Earth and Pigs in Clover. Before he was even 20 years old, Loyd had published some very well-known puzzles.

Loyd claimed from 1891 to have also developed the 15-puzzle, but this was later refuted. Loyd also claimed that he presented the so-called chessboard paradox at the World Chess Congress in 1858.

LIfe
Loyd was the youngest of eight children; his brothers Thomas and especially Isaac also composed chess problems. His mother was a cousin of the portrait painter John Singer Sargent. One of Loyd's ancestors was governor of Pennsylvania.

After training as a civil engineer, Loyd received a license as a steam and mechanical engineer from the city of New York City. He traded on Wall Street, but did not take any risky trades.

Individual evidence
  Anders Thulin: CHESS PSEUDONYMS AND SIGNATURES. (PDF; 307 kB). An Electronic Edition, Malmö. January 2, 2011, accessed on October 17, 2023.
  The anecdote comes from Alain C. White's book Sam Loyd and his Chess Problems (1913), reproduced here in Wilhelm Maßmann's translation after Yochanan Afek: Exzelsior! Climb higher! In: Schach, Volume 68 (2014) No. 6, pp. 48–51.
  Alain C. White: Sam Loyd and his chess problems. Whitehead & Miller, New York 1913, p. 87 (chapter “Loyd and Steinitz”).
  Alan C. White: Sam Loyd and his chess problems. Whitehead & Miller, New York 1913, p. 451.
  See the task notes in the Schwalbe problem database, P1055026.
  Slocum, Botermans: New Book of Puzzles, Freeman, New York 1992, pp. 78–79.
  Sam Loyd, Puzzle Man, This. (Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive) (PDF). In: chess-problemist.com. From: The New York Times, April 12, 1911, accessed October 17, 2023.
factories
Chess strategy, a treatise upon the art of problem composition (1878)
Sam Loyd's Puzzles (1912)
Sam Loyd's Cyclopedia of 5000 Puzzles, Tricks, and Conundrums (with Answers) (1914), online version
literature
Alain Campbell White: Sam Loyd and his chess tasks. Translated by Wilhelm Maßmann. Chess publisher Hans Hedewig’s successor Curt Ronniger, Leipzig 1926.
Sam Loyd – His Story and Best Problems. Edited by Andrew Soltis. Chess Digest, Dallas 1995. ISBN 0875682677.
Sam Loyd – Mathematical Puzzles and Games; Brain teasers for smart minds. Published by Martin Gardner, DuMont, Cologne 1978, ISBN 3-7701-1049-8.
Sam Loyd - Even more mathematical puzzles and games, edited by Martin Gardner, DuMont, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-7701-1145-1.
The Puzzle King: Sam Loyd's Chess Problems and Selected Mathematical Puzzles. Edited by Sid Pickard. Everyman Chess, London 1996. ISBN 1886846057.

Source: Germain Wikipedia