For full rules and explanation, see the first post in this series.
This was previously my favorite composition in the series. I started from a central idea, which is not hard to identify, and the rest of the composition flowed naturally from the constraints needed to support that idea. If you are trying to avoid spoilers make sure your solution is complete before viewing the hints for this problem.
The theme of this problem is pins. Well, it’s not strongly thematic, but that was the starting point for the composition.
White appears to have a mate in two with knight to c5; black can delay mate by one turn by blocking with the knight. Once again, the white king is placed in such a way to interfere with this plan. However, the mate in three must be strongly forcing or else black will have many ways to delay mate with checks.
White is in check, with the king on h8. Rather than moving the knight to c5 where it can guard the black king’s escape to b7, the knight must go to d4 to break the black bishop’s check. The bishop is pinned so there is no possibility to renew the threat by taking the pinned knight. Instead, after interference from the black knight, the only legal move for black is for the king to capture b7; queen to c6 (supported by the knight being on d4) is mate.
The white king on e5 does not work because it interferes with the white bishop.
White has many potential attacks, but no visible mate in one threats, so the white king is supporting in some way. Any attacking line where black can just block or capture the attacking piece can be disregarded, as the white king cannot prevent such defenses.
Think out of the box. If you are stumped for some time on this problem (which several playtesters were), perhaps it would be easier to make a list of sneaky ways to make a mate in one and check if any of those are applicable here.
The queen and bishop attacks are easily defused by black, except that queen to e2 could be guarded by the white king. However that attack and knight to f4 both fail to prevent the flight square d4.
This leaves only the rook going to d1, which black cannot interfere with and must escape to the sole flight square of c2. If the white king is guarding that square, then rook to d1 is mate, but placing the white king on b1 or c1 blocks the rook move. Unless, of course, the rook can jump the white king which is possible in one way: the king starts on e1, and the winning move is to castle.
Follow RSS/Atom feed for updates.