THE longest problem ever (much longer than the mere 549 mover...) The &quot;Fireside Book of Chess&quot; by I. Chernev and F. Reinfeld includes the following diagram
[fen &quot;3nk3/3NN3/3PP3/3BB3/3PP3/3PP3/3PP3/2RQKR2 w - - 0 1&quot;]


Composed by J.N. Babson for Brentano's Chess Monthly in 1882. Mate on
the 1220th move, after compelling Black to make three successive and
complete Knight's tours.

(Note that there is a mate in one. The problem asks for something more specific.)
Facts:

Babson is a real composer, famous for long mate problems.
Brentano's Chess Monthly was a real publication from 1880 to 1882, and Babson did have problems published there.
A FIDE page that lists people with FIDE titles has a biographical sketch of Babson citing a 1220 move problem, and a 1990 move problem on a 10x10 board.

Issues:

I can't find any reference to this problem on the web, other than the above mentioned book.
Nobody ever mentions any problem with this many moves... anywhere!
A knight tour is the motion of a knight through all the board squares. Three of these would mean only 192 moves.

So here are my questions:


Is the problem for real?
How should one interpret the knight tour condition? Probably the knight will capture most of the central pieces, but do the other pieces have to move aside to let the knight through?
What is the solution?
Why is this not more widely known?
After some searching, it turns out that this monster is very much a real chess problem. The official name for it is  &quot;The Obelisk.&quot;
The earliest known reference I have found is from February of 1882, mere weeks after its publication. Bizarrely, it comes from an Australian magazine. The site I found it on is trove.nla.gov.au.
It appears in 1882, February 25th edition of the South Australian Weekly Chronicle, published in Adelaide, on page 25. It is part of an overall review of Brentano's January 1882 issue.
Here is a clipping of the relevant section to read for yourself.

I also found mention of it in &quot;American Chess Review, Volume 1, Issues 1-6&quot; (readable on Google books) from 1886, just four years after the original publication in Brentano's Chess Monthly.
The information is given in the middle of the page. The position itself is given near the end of the page in descriptive notation (link to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_notation)). Note that the &quot;S&quot; is German notation for the knight; it was semi-standard back then.

Here are later sources.

Chess Review 1936, issue 37 page 17; viewable online in the US Chess Federation online archive
Curious Chess Facts, by Irving Chernev, 1937
Wonders and Curiosities of Chess, page 205, by Irving Chernev, 1974
The Complete Chess Addict, by Mike Fox &amp; Richard James, 1987
The Even More Complete Chess Addict, by Mike Fox &amp; Richard James, 1994

Unsurpingsly, there is no solution given anywhere at all. The reason for this is that the magazine ceased publication soon after the mate in 1220 printed. Thus, another edition with the solution was never made.
As for how to interpret the stipulation, I believe it is very simple. Wite forces the Black knight to visit each and every square three times. Then White gives checkmates. Most of the moves come from White's piece dancing around in order to do said forcing. If anyone is crazy to try and solve it, they will surely find a much shorter solution than whatever Otto Blathy had in mind.