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These Puzzles Will Make You Rage: The 10 Hardest Puzzles On Chess.com

These Puzzles Will Make You Rage: The 10 Hardest Puzzles On Chess.com

SamCopeland
| 107 | Tactics

We've all been there. You are happily solving some puzzles on Chess.com, feeling good, rattling off forced checkmates and snappy tactics, and then %*&$—you get that dreaded, red "X." What?! How could your solution not be right?! That was totally winning for you! And what BS solution is THAT? Rubbish—no way that can work!

Universal chess player body language upon missing a puzzle.

By this point, you've probably already smashed your mouse or phone, but if you haven't, you might click on the analysis to pull up Stockfish and confirm what you already know—this puzzle is bad, and you will be immediately reporting it, along with a strongly worded email to support about how you are a premium member, and if Chess.com is going to feed you terrible and incorrect puzzles like this, then you will be cancelling your membership!

—Oh... That's why. That makes sense...

Fabiano Caruana reacting to a ridiculous chess puzzle.

Most puzzles on Chess.com can be challenging and can trip up a solver if they are not on their game, but today we are presenting 10 puzzles that (according to the data) are nearly impossible to solve. We asked our data team to find us the top 10 puzzles with the lowest pass rate with a puzzle rating over 3,000 on Chess.com. All of these puzzles have a pass rate below 3%—to state the mathematically obvious, that means that only three solvers out of 100 found the correct solution while the other 97 solvers were likely reduced to rage and confusion.

What's particularly fun about these problems is that when given the massive hint that the pass rate is so low, you may be able to solve a few that have tricked professionals. Without further ado, let's dive in! Try these 10 puzzles for yourself, OR if you are just here for the good time, click the light bulb to reveal the solutions.

Puzzle 1 - Ooooh, we win the queen!  - Rating 3372 - Pass Rate 1.38%

Puzzle 2 - So Many Tempting Choices... - Rating 3463 - Pass Rate 1.76%

Puzzle 3 - How did I miss that?! - Rating 3217 - Pass Rate 1.82%

Puzzle 4 - Accurate till the end. - Rating 3341 - Pass Rate 1.85%

Puzzle 5 - WTF?! - Rating 3045 - Pass Rate 2.06%

Puzzle 6 - Classic 1.e4 e5 Tactics - Rating 3325 - Pass Rate 2.06%

Puzzle 7 - Which move is hardest? - Rating 3350 - Pass Rate 2.09%

Puzzle 8 - Know Your Endgames - Rating 3184 - Pass Rate 2.51%

Puzzle 9 - Threading The Needle - Rating 3229 - Pass Rate 2.54%

Puzzle 10 - Don't Touch The Pawn. - Rating 3010 - Pass Rate 2.60%

SamCopeland
NM Sam Copeland

I'm the Head of Community for Chess.com. I earned the National Master title in 2012, and in 2014, I returned to my home state of South Carolina to start Strategery: Chess and Games. In late 2015, I began working for Chess.com and haven't looked back since.

You can find my personal content on Twitch , Twitter , and YouTube where I further indulge my love of chess.

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