Puzzle from Laszlo Polgar (Mate in two moves)

probly 10 seconds

I'm back,,,movie and food were great.A4 is the problem,so k. got to come into a net--Qc3+(always the q. or r.),kxQ,RD3.Couple of min.s not counting food break.

Hi,

about 2 min.

Here's an advice for solvers that is relevant to most composed mate in x problems, especially the shorter ones.

look for the unlikely move.

There are numerous examples of this. Reason being that, composers like beautiful, surprising moves, which make the problem special and the solving harder. Usually the first move will not be a check, but a very strong "quiet" move. However, if it is a check, it will usually be a "dramatic" check, best example of this is a queen sacrifice, which is very common in puzzles.

Sometimes the unthinkable happens, such as pinning your own piece, allowing the opponent to check you, moving a piece to the most unlikely square on the board, underpromoting, and of course, sacrificing your queen (or another piece).

The key move may also appear later in the puzzle, not on the first move, which is usually quite elegant.

The more you do these things, the quicker you can solve them by searching for these key moves, instead of looking at all the natural, solid moves and not reach the desired goal.

Well, isn't that how you should play chess?  "Look for the unlikely move."

About a minute or so.

And I am going through the Polgar book with my son. There are puzzles that we could not figure out after five minutes. Some come to me almost instantaneously. Certain patterns are burned into my memory. Most... not so much.

I can agree with your comment.

About 2 min. I think

That is quite impressive for an 1100 player who is 113 years old and cannot spell his own first name :) (check his profile)

When playing chess you usually look at the likely move first. Often enough, the natural moves are the best. You frequently follow general rules of thumb, such as developing pieces and castling early, controlling the center, putting a rook on the 7th rank and so on. These natural, "likely" moves are good for a reason.

Of course in specially composed positions, the key move(s) is usually an unlikely move, one that rarely happens in a game, such as a queen sacrifice, a fabulous quiet move, or any other brilliant combination.

This may also happen in a real game of course, however seldom in such magnitude, and since it is a game and not a puzzle, the times we recognize it are even rarer still.

Something like 90 seconds. Was looking to the most unlikely move and came up with Qb4+ and Qa5:. Well, they were not good indeed. :-) It went fast the moment I realized the pawn on a3 was mandatory for any mate and the black queen would interfere on c3. So c3 had to be blocked by black itself. How could that be accomplished?

~10 seconds.

I am noticing an odd correlation between chess.com rating and time solving the problem. The higher the rating the longer it takes to solve the problem. I will leave it to the rest of the group to explore this phenomenon.

Yeh, great book! 

rc3 is also the right move

When I knew it was a mate in 2, then it became obvious that the first move was a check (which is quite rare for composed problems as 99% of the time they have obscure quiet moves) any quiet first move could be met with Qxd4+ which means that mate would have to follow and could not see how Qxd4 recapture on d4 could end in mate. > first move is check.

About 15 seconds. and it is possible to do the puzzles in 2-5 seconds. believe it or not, I once got one in 1 second.

I saw the first move directly after I saw the pin of the rook, because it was the only move that could block the pin. To see the pin took me some three or four seconds.

I knew it had to be the solution, but then did I check first what if the King moved away and next what if the King accepted the sacrifice.

Took me another 20 seconds to check, double check and triple check.