Blogs
2024/05/25 DPA: "Open The Castle Gates For The Cleric"

2024/05/25 DPA: "Open The Castle Gates For The Cleric"

EnPassantFork
| 1

White to move.

Black's King has only one escape square, h6:  the Rook forms a wall along the f file and the King and pawn do the same on the 5th rank.

There is a fork with 1. b3 but Black's d pawn is only 2 moves from promotion:  he could ignore the threat and simply play 1. ... d2.

I think I see something:  1. h5+ Kh6. 2. Rf6+ gxf6. 3. Bf8#.

.

I was looking for a way to get the Bishop involved but e3 was controlled by the Black Knight and f8 was blocked by White's Rook.  Since the White King by itself controls the entire 5th rank, the h pawn is actually not needed for this task, which made 1. h5+ a good candidate move; otherwise, doing so would have left a hole at g5 [ie "the space left behind" that Dane Mattson refers to frequently].

And, the only other checks for White were dark square-related

Once I visualized what the board looked like after 1. ... Kh6, 2. Rf6 came intuitively:  I didn't calculate fully but thought it was the solution.