2024/03/14 DPA: "Make Way For...The Bishop"
White to move.
Black's a Rook is undefended.
If White moves his Knight, he will uncover his Rook's attack on Black's e Rook.
So, for example, 1. Nxe4 Rxd1 2. Rxd1 leaves White up a piece.
However, Black can play 1. ... Rxe4.
Also, note that White's Knight is triply attacked but only singly defended. So starting with 1. Bxe6 Nxd2 2. Qxf7+ Kh8 nets White a pawn only.
1. a3 Nxd2 looks bad for White. But it's an idea as it removes a defender of the Black Knight.
1. Nc4 Rad8 seems to hold.
There's no move that can adequately defend the Knight so moving it or capturing something seems best. There doesn't appear to be any good squares for moving so capturing is probably it.
1. Nxe4 Rxe4 2. a3 and there's no way for the Queen to move to safety AND guard the Rook. 2. ... Qxa3 3. Qxe4 Qxb3, winning the exchange minus a pawn, or 3. Bxe6 Rxe6 - no, that's no good for White as the Rook escapes.
Wait: 2. a3 fails due to 2. ... Rxa3. I forgot about that Rook. This allows the Black Queen to continue to defend the e Rook.
1. Bxe6 Nxd2 2. Qxf7+ Kh8 but there's no back rank mate. And f8 is protected twice.
1. Nxe4 Rxe4 2. Bd6, attacking the Queen.
That was correct. Not easy to see given that two pieces were blocking the White Rook's support of d6. But we've had a couple of puzzles in the recent past that involved the same Clearance principle.
Yes, there were a host of other first moves for Black that were better but this does not make the puzzle "wrong". The point was that the solver found the winning move 1. Nxe4 with the [presumed] idea of 2. Bd6. What the opponent does after is irrelevant from a puzzle standpoint [although very relevant from a game standpoint, which is a separate matter].
If you can't accept that puzzles can have sub-optimal moves [although clearly they do as this happens repeatedly], think of the puzzles as "lessons" designed to teach something.
https://www.chess.com/blog/EnPassantFork/no-the-puzzle-is-not-wrong
Note that 1. ... Rxe4 was probably chosen because it was the most likely response of a median player [ie "He captured my piece so I have to capture back."]. It certainly was the only response I looked at because the others simply accepted the loss of a piece and that's not a likely puzzle solution.