📖 As recorded in the classical booksBook result: Red wins淵深海闊
📚 Yuanshen Haikua — a Qing-dynasty endgame manual
Red to move with exactly five pieces: the king, both elephants, one chariot — and a single pawn as its only other attacker. Black holds both advisors in the palace, a chariot and three pawns, clearly the larger force. Yet Uyên Thâm Hải Khoát (game 335) concludes: Red wins. A force this thin wins no war of attrition; it can only win with a single, precise strike — like a dagger waiting.
The name is an assassination recorded in the histories: in 515 BC Zhuan Zhu took on killing King Liao of Wu — a king in three layers of armour, with halberd guards crowding the stairs. To reach the one spot he could strike from, Zhuan Zhu spent months on something no one expected: learning to grill fish. That detail — and the dagger hidden in the fish — is told below. On the board: five pieces, one chance — can you find Red's dagger stroke?