How many bishops can you place on a chessboard so that no bishop is attacking any other bishop?
For a standard 8 × 8 chessboard the answer is 14. In general, for an n × n chessboard the answer is 2n − 2.
Here’s one way to place the maximum number of non-attacking bishops.
To see that the bishops cannot attack each other, I think it’s helpful to imagine extending the chessboard so that each bishop attacks the same number of squares. Then we can see that they miss each other.
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