Legend has it that the following very old puzzle that was designed to demonstrate what at the time was an issue with the rules of chess.
The puzzle designer wanted the rules of chess to be written better or more thoroughly.
_______________ THE PUZZLE ____________
White to move, must Mate in one move (edit: CheckMate, not StaleMate):
White pieces:
b7-P , c7-R , d5-B , f6-Q , g2-K.
Black pieces:
a7-k.
The person who composed this puzzle had a solution that he claimed worked.
I will post the solution this weekend; or you can watch the YouTube video (especially starting at 4min 51secs into the video):
Without looking at the video, I’ll assume the idea is for white to promote to a black knight, which would block black’s last escape square without allowing an interpose or a capture.
George Koltanowski used to have some of these, where white would promote to a black piece, and/or to a king. I think there was one where white promoted two pawns to black kings, then checkmated all three kings at the same time in one move.
When I read that in Staunton’s era in the 1800’s there were still games where Black made the game’s first move, I find it easier to believe that much long ago there was some reason to wonder that maybe a player could promote his own pawn to an officer of the opposing color (except to a pawn or another king).
If there really frequent enough positions where promoting to the opposing color would be beneficial to the pawn owner, I could then imagine someone on a rules committee saying - “Well, why not?”.
The person who composed this puzzle had a solution that he claimed worked.