Am I missing something, or is the configuration shown initially not actually reachable? It's white to move, yet the black pawns are in their starting location and the black king has no adjacent empty square, it's entombed by its pawns and the white bishop so the configuration could not have been reached.
To be clear you're misunderstanding the position though. Black pawns are NOT in starting position. They've moved all the way across the board. Those are white pawn starting positions.
Pure defensive (and extremely rude and hostile) projection. (And the response is more of the same, and full of fallacies and false statements). There was no condescension in my comment, just an attempt to be helpful (speaking of "suppression", I will attempt that again with this person). I did not say your question was stupid (it wasn't), I said that you were projecting stupidity on the author of the article (I didn't say you think they are stupid, but apparently this distinction is too subtle for some), and that warrants a rethink.
That your comment was downvoted to death indicates maybe you should reconsider how you are being perceived if you truly believe you weren't (and still aren't) being condescending. I don't believe my comment was any more rude or hostile than your original one.
If people were to follow your advice as a general rule, that's how we get groupthink, and how learning is suppressed by making people afraid to ask questions. See the children's story "the emperor's new clothes" for an example.
It takes effort to be negative to see a comment opening with the poster saying "am I missing something" and think they're calling the author stupid instead of acknowledging their own ignorance.
