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Puzzling

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    $\begingroup$ So, is it deliberate that the first diagram has three black knights even though all eight black pawns are still on the board? I mean, obviously it might be -- it's unclear what sort of metaphorical shenanigans might be going on -- but it seems rather odd. $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan ♦
    Commented Mar 11, 2019 at 1:44
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    $\begingroup$ Also not making any sense at first glance: in the first position W has "obviously" made at least one pawn capture (maybe two for pawn-promotion reasons) but black still has 16 pieces. $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan ♦
    Commented Mar 11, 2019 at 1:48
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    $\begingroup$ This sort of puzzle seems hard to make any progress on, because plainly we aren't dealing with an actually-possible chess game, played by the normal rules, which somehow tallies with the events in the story (because there are impossible things in the diagrams); but if the chess game isn't being played by the normal rules then it seems like anything could be happening and it's hard to see how to draw any actual conclusions. $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan ♦
    Commented Mar 11, 2019 at 1:49
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    $\begingroup$ E.g., the sort of thing I want to be able to say is "look, in this position you can tell that black's last move was X, but that means that such-and-such a piece could have done Y to protect the black king but didn't, so that piece is the traitor". But if we don't know by what rules the game is actually being played, that sort of reasoning can't work. We could try to make the rule-violations themselves be the evidence of treachery, but if e.g. we decide that one of the black knights in the first diagram is a bishop in disguise then [...continues] $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan ♦
    Commented Mar 11, 2019 at 1:54
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    $\begingroup$ ... that could just as well (in-story) be a deliberate trick to confuse white, rather than indicating any malfeasance within the black camp. Etc. $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan ♦
    Commented Mar 11, 2019 at 1:54