Moderator's Note:

Somehow, I accidentally managed to delete the original post here which was a request to find some positions that resemble numerals optically on the chessboard. The OP is looking for 4 or 6 of these. I have PM'ed him to ask him to recreate his original post. My bad! Sorry!

Sounds odd... Is there some ulterior motive for this, like a plot device in a book or story or computer game where the hero/heroine figures out the combination to the safe (or lattitude/longitude or some such thing) from solving a series of chess puzzles? It seems very tricky to come up with just one where (1) the chess moves make sense from a chess perspective, and (2) you get some dot-matrix message in the final position -- and you want 4-6 of them! Anyway, if we understand what you're trying to accomplish, we might be better able to help you come up with something that works for you.

i honestly don't see this working out very well. I just can't envision what it would look like

In the starting position, if you look at the board sideways you can discern either two "1" numerals or an "11". Also it could also be construed as an equals sign. Could be the climax of the story - figuring out the last digits were revealed by the starting position -"Good lord, the solution has been in front of us the whole time!"

You might want to page through some games collections looking at the diagrams until you see a shape reminiscent of a number. I doubt that you'll get multiple digits from just one game though. Another alternative possibility is Fairy Chess- somewhere, I actually do remember seeing chess pieces arranged in various numerals in some Fairy Chess book. I can't remember if the numerals were the starting position or the final position. In any case, if it were the starting position you could just use the solution as a staring position and use retrograde analysis ala Smullyan. Also his books might give you some ideas about revealing mysteries through Chess- check out his Sherlock Holmes and Arabian Nights books.

The American problem composer Eugene Cook reputedly composed some problems in the form of numerals but I don't have any on hand.

Ha! Looking at the board sideways... I like that! You could also generate 8-bit binary numbers from looking at it from the sides -- getting a "1" where there are pieces on the rank/file and a "0" where there are none. Of course, you have to specify which side to look at to get the most/least signifcant bits right. You could also convert it to ASCII or hexadecimal for an extra twist... For example, after 1. e4 e6 you get (using the chess diagram convention of White being on the bottom and looking *from* that side):

Bottom side: 1111_1111 = FF (hexadecimal)
Left side: 1110_1011 = EB
Top side: 1111_1111 = FF
Right side: 1101_0111 = D7

Anyone who cares can look up the ASCII codes themselves...

GEEK ALERT!!!!

I was in the dealer room at a chess tournament a couple of years back wearing my shirt with the glow-in-the-dark periodic table on the front. (It's serious geekware -- the radioactive elements really do glow in the dark! )

At the checkout table, the guy taking my money asked, "So are you a teacher?"

I said, "Why do you ask?"

He said, "I was just looking at your shirt."

I said, "Oh, no, I'm just a nerdy guy who plays chess. I bet you don't get very many of those in here..."

Here's a link to a series of 6 chess puzzles someone created in honor of the pending WCC match. The starting positions of the first three spell Anand and the starting positions of the second three spell Topalov:

http://www.anand-topalov.com/en/news&article_id=18.html

Makes the original "Odd Request" seem a little more reasonable...