2024/11/16 DPA: "Into The Hornet's Nest"

White to move:

White is down a Bishop.

Black's King has no escape squares.

White would like to play Ra7# but Black's a Rook is guarding that square.  Can White remove it?

Notice that White's c Rook is not doing anything:  it guards the c file but the Black King is on the a file, with no way of getting to the c file.  So it could be used to possibly remove the Black a Rook.

1. Rc8 threatens the Black Queen; if 1. ... Qxc8  2. Qxc8+ Rhxc8 and Black survives.

Also, Rc6 is checkmate but for Black's light-squared Bishop.

1. Qe6 and if 1. ... Bxe6  2. Rc6#.

White also threatens 2. Rc6+ Bxc6  3. Qc4+ Bb5  4. Qxb5#.

How can Black defend?  He has no check.  The h Rook is out of commission.  The dark-squared Bishop is pinned.  The Queen can move but wants to keep defending the dark-squared Bishop.  And the a Rook can't move to a7 due to 2. Rxa7# and b8 and c8 don't offer anything.

Black does have 1. ... Bb7, which blocks White's f Rook from getting to a7.

Rc6+ is not checkmate due to ... Qb6 but Rxb6# is.

2. Rd7, threatening 3. Rxd6#

1. Qe6 Re8  2. Qxd5 Rxe3  3. Rc6+

1. Qe6 Qb8  2. Qxd5 Rc8  3. Rxc8 Qxc8  4. Qxd6#

Looks like a winning a move.

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The key was seeing how 1. Qe6 threatened too many ideas that Black could not simultaneously counter.

There were several motifs:

• Control of the 7th rank
• King immobility
• A weak square [c6] that was attacked a 2nd time with 1. Qe6
• Ignoring the attack on our Rooks [and seemingly compounding it]

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As usual, there will be those who complain that the puzzle is wrong because the opponent did not play the optimal 1. ... Qb6.

Once again, the reason is that Black was lost no matter what he did, so 1. ... Bxe6 is not a blunder, which changes the outcome from a win to a draw or loss, but merely a sub-optimal, which doesn't change the outcome but merely accelerates it.

Puzzles allow for sub-optimals by the opponent [not the Solver].

A practical reason for not choosing 1. ... Qb6 is that it requires the Solver to find a M9, not very realistic.

The point of puzzles is for the Solver to find the winning idea[s], which we did with 1. Qe6.  Everything after that is gravy.  If you want to practice against the computer in the case of 1. ... Qb6, by all means, do so.