Daily History Challenge · No. 39 · Thursday 6 August 2026 · Chain
Puzzle No. 39: Chain
The anchor was Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion (1761 CE). Every challenger is listed below with its year.
The anchor
On 14 January 1761 the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani, allied with the Rohillas and the Nawab of Awadh, crushed the Maratha army under Sadashivrao Bhau at Panipat north of Delhi. The Marathas, then the foremost power in India, had pushed into the Punjab in pursuit of dominance over the declining Mughal heartland, but their forces, encumbered by some 200,000 non-combatants and cut off from supplies, were starving by the time battle was joined. The defeat was catastrophic: contemporary estimates suggest around 100,000 Marathas, soldiers and camp followers, died during and after the engagement, including many of their ablest commanders. Panipat halted Maratha designs on the northwest and left a power vacuum in northern India that neither the exhausted Afghans nor the fractured Marathas could fill. The Maratha confederacy recovered partially but was weakened at a critical moment, easing the path for British East India Company expansion in the decades that followed.
The 10 challengers, in order of date
Before Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion
Before Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion
Before Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion
Before Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion
Before Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion
Before Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion
After Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion
After Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion
After Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion
After Third Battle of Panipat checks Maratha expansion