~*~ THE ANSWER -- Golden Chicken Standing on One Leg ~*~

In words: the position is the same as last week's, with one addition. White's move number one, played at A five, is shown as a white square with a black numeral -- the Golden Chicken, standing alone at the edge of the board. Everything else is unchanged: White has an unbroken wall across row nine from column A to column E, and a second wall running straight down column E from row nine to row six. White also has a lone stone at A eight and a lone stone at A one, plus a small tucked-in cluster at B five, D five, C four, D four, and C three, sitting inside Black's shape. Black fills the rest of the corner around that cluster: columns B and C from row two to row eight, with outside stones at A seven and A two, and a Black wall along row eight and row seven. The star point at D three remains an empty intersection, marked only for reference.

This is 金鸡独立 -- jīn jī dú lì -- the Golden Chicken Standing on One Leg, and it is exactly what it sounds like: a chicken standing on precisely one leg, alone, apparently the single most vulnerable thing on the whole board. And you cannot knock it over.

Black would love nothing more than to simply capture this stone -- it looks like one move, doesn't it? That is the trap folded into the name. The instant Black spends a move trying to take it, Black's own surrounding group runs short of the very liberties it needed to survive. The chicken does not need to fight. It only needs to stand there, on its one leg, and let Black's attempt at knocking it over be the thing that kills Black instead.

This is why I told you it wasn't where you thought!!! I have watched strong players spend ten minutes searching row six and row seven for a wall to complete, and walk straight past the one stone sitting all on its own at the edge, doing apparently nothing, doing everything. Mail me if you found it on your own -- I mean that. I will actually put your name up.