In the July 1979 issue of Chess Life (called Chess Life & Review in those glory days), columnist Andy Soltis provided the following problem:

White is to mate black but cannot move his rook until the final mating move. This can be done within a dozen or so moves. (Sure, white can win sooner without restrictions.)

Unlike many non-standard problems, this one holds instruction in which, Soltis notes, the novice discovers the value of king opposition, though it may take hours of trial and error.

Wow, that is terrific! That took me a while to get.

Thanks for posting, that really is very instructive.

i agree with tonightonly, extremely instructive...XD

cool

neato thanks for the post

Do the first five moves need to follow that line exactly? Can't the opposition be regained?

Thank you for the question.

Can you please clarify; Do you mean regained opposition by white or black?

By white.

Very instructive!!! always get the opposition of the kings !

Excellent practice for keeping opposition.  Thanks for the post.

why move the white king so odd?

Very instructive. Thank you for posting this

I have the same question - why the first moves are so odd ?

I will give my best shot at explaining this one.  :)  This is a nice puzzle!  :)

White wants too keep an odd number of spaces between the white king and the black king when both kings are on the same file (g- or h-file) after white's turn has been completed.

When the black king is on the h-file then white may choose to go to the f-file only if there will be an even number of ranks in between kings after white completes the move.

Black has the same goals.  But black wants these situations to occur after black's turn rather than whites.  :)

thank you very much. very helpful :)

Bravo, einstein_69101.

Thanks for the additional comments.

ahhh! thanks so much.

nice...i learned that from my dad

Sharp dad! Seriously!

IM Silman has a similar instructive exercise in his book "How to Reassess Your Chess".

In this exercise with merely two kings, white to move has the task to reach the f8, g8, or h8 squares.

I will not replicate the solution; the book is worth purchasing for this AND much more!