While the real benefit out of studying tsumego is to sharpen your reading skill rather than imagining the problem to be a realistic scenario that could be reverse engineered, it can be more motivating if the latter were true. For instance, maybe for this problem:
Maybe what happened is that Black made a 3-3 invasion of White's corner:
And the following sequence occurs:
Later, elsewhere on the board a ko fight arises and B plays
as a threat, to which W responds. Later on, W realizes that she is behind and eyes the corner to see if there is a way to kill it, playing
. Thinking of the problem in this light, one could ask themselves...- How does Black refute and live? (original problem statement)
- If W hadn't played , could she kill this corner?
- The difference between this position and the first diagram is that W had stones in a and b. Do they make a difference?
Anyways, this is just my little way of making tsumego solving a more immersive experience. How would you answer these questions? Any other interesting examples would be great, below is another problem that looks reverse-engineerable:
be at B15?
?