Riding a sheep is a lot harder than you think, as this young fellow at a rodeo is finding out.

Even in day to day life, some things do turn out to be harder than you think. Any one of us can think of numerous examples.

Now, in our game of checkers, certain positions are surprisingly hard, much harder than they look and much harder than you think.

Although this column appears on the first Saturday of the month, our traditional "speed problem" day, today's problem isn't quite a speed problem. It's really all about finding the right first move and then the follow-up will be fairly clear for most players, even if it's a number of moves in length. So see how fast you can find the winning move. It may perhaps surprise you and depending on your skill level you may find it harder than you think.

BLACK

WHITE
White to Play and Win

W:W19,K22,23,24,27,30,32:B8,12,13,16,20,21,K31

If you don't see the solution right away, try harder. When you're ready, though, you won't have to try very hard to click your mouse on Read More to see the solution.

Solution

We've presented what we think is a reasonable line of play. Variations are possible and we'd like to hear from you if you can improve on the solution presented here. The computer solution featured a raft of moves that a human wouldn't play, so we've omitted it.

White Wins.

Our thanks to regular contributors Lloyd and "Gosh Josh" Gordon for sending us this one.