The Knight’s Tour is a problem on a chess board that can be explained in this simple way. It is a sequence of moves that the Knight makes on the chess board so that it lands on every square just once.

Chaturanga Turanga Bandham , an elegant solution to the Knight’s tour, is hidden in two poems of the 1008 Sanskrit poems called Paduka Sahasram, written by Swami Vedanta Desika in the 13th Century.

Poems #929 and #930 are anagrammatic. Poem #929 has 32 syllables and is written on the board twice to cover all 64 squares. The Knight moves from the first square following the syllables of poem #930 and solves the Knight’s Tour. See the pattern shown in blue lines on the chess board.

This painting sits at the intersection of several disciplines - Mathematics, History, Literature and Art.

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Explainer video
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