How to play Chess Puzzles

One chess puzzle a day with the same instruction every time: White to play, and there is a forced mate. Find it.

What "forced" means

Forced means it works against every legal defence. Not the most likely defence, not the natural-looking one — every single one.

That distinction is the whole of tactical chess. A move that mates only if Black cooperates is not a solution, and this is exactly where beginners go wrong: they find a line that ends in checkmate, assume it, and never check what happens if Black interposes a piece or gives up material to delay.

The pill at the top of the board tells you the length of the mate. Mate in two means two White moves including the first; mate in three means three.

How the board responds

Play the move on the board and it tells you immediately whether you were right.

A move that lets Black wriggle out is refused with a reason rather than quietly accepted. That is deliberate: a tactic you can shuffle your way through teaches nothing, and a position that drifts away from the solution after a wrong move is a position you can no longer solve.

Get the key move right and Black replies with its most stubborn defence — not a random legal move, the hardest one — and you carry on until mate.

Every legal defence has an answer. If a reply surprises you, the puzzle is not broken; look again.

Every puzzle is proved

The position is composed, then an exhaustive mate search — not an engine evaluation, an actual search over every legal continuation — confirms both that the mate exists and that it is unique.

Uniqueness matters as much as existence. A puzzle with two different first moves that both mate has no single answer to find, and finding one of them teaches you nothing about why it was right.

How to look for a mate

Start with checks, not with good moves. In a mating puzzle the solution is almost always a check or a move creating an unstoppable threat, and there are far fewer checks available than legal moves.

Count the escape squares. Look at the enemy king and list the squares it can move to. A mate has to cover all of them plus the square the king is on, so a move that covers three of four escape squares is probably not it, and a move that takes away the last flight square usually is.

Look for the sacrifice. In composed problems the key move very often gives something away — it removes a defender, deflects a piece, or opens a line — and it looks wrong precisely because it loses material. If the natural moves do not work, ask which piece is defending the mating square and what would happen if it were not there.

Work backwards from the mating picture. Ask what position would be checkmate, then ask how to get there.

Hints and modes in the puzzle trainer

Two hints are available: the first names the piece to move, the second where it goes. Solve the daily to keep a streak, or switch to Practice for unlimited puzzles at a chosen difficulty.