Leonard Barden's fantastic world record

[Leonard Barden]

It's a Sam Loyd classic. I don't have a facility to do diagrams, but here is the position in Forsyth. Perhaps someone can kindly post the diagram.

3N2R1
pp3p2
3K2p1
8
2pk4
3pp2p
5pB1
1Q4BR

[Roger de Coverly]

3N2R1/pp3p2/3K2p1/8/2pk4/3pp2p/3P1pB1/1Q4BR

(edit) amended to insert pawn on d2 (/edit)

[Leonard Barden]

Sorry! I omitted a white pawn at d2.

[Chris Rice]

Happy 89th birthday Leonard! Jon Manley/Kingpin tweet

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Happy 89th birthday Leonard!"

I'll second that!

[Stewart Reuben]

Happy 89th Leonard.

Today the problem posed would be 'What action should the arbiter take if he came upon this position, with White to play, in a tournament, and why?

Perhaps I will use that in my forthcoming arbiters' exam in Batumi.

[Nick Grey]

Restart the game? There are 9 black pawns.
Happy birthday.

[Craig Pritchett]

Birthday wishes echoed from Scotland. Leonard, keep up your excellent chess reportage!

[Andy Stoker]

Happy Birthday Mr Barden - the chess world owes you a deep debt of gratitude

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Not sure how the problem was originally presented (by Loyd), but David Gilbert explained earlier in the thread that he came upon this problem in an Evening Standard column 30 years ago, see here. Googling for Lloyd and nine pawns finds discussions such as this.

(PS. For anyone interested in retro analysis, see The Retrograde Analysis Corner)

[Roger Lancaster]

Curiously, I came across this problem at http://www.uschess.org/content/view/11193/630/ where it appears to be attributed to H Fischer in 1910. Is this a straightforward mistake or is there more to it than meets the eye? (And birthday greetings to Leonard, of course!).