2024/12/02: "How To Design Puzzles"

Many of us consume puzzles but very few produce them.

Judging by the dismissive comments, one would think it's trivial to create a great puzzle.

Not so fast.

A good puzzle, by chess.com's standards for the Daily Puzzle, should only have 1 winning line:  ideally, the winning line is a significant edge for the Solver and every other line is neutral or worse.

For example, a puzzle that features a M1 [checkmate in one move], a M2, and a M3 is generally considered to be a bad puzzle [although there have been exceptions].

This means putting the position into an engine and letting it try to find alternative wins, then loading the puzzle into the editor to try and remove those alternatives without, hopefully, dramatically altering the original puzzle idea.

- Send submissions to Dane Mattson [@Fischwitsch]

First the logistics:

- Open your desired game and save the position in PGN format:

Here is a sample game:

https://www.chess.com/game/live/104818191061

[You can find these by opening your profile and going to the games section.]

Click on the "Share" icon

Click on the PGN tab and select and copy the text in the below window:

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Open a new browser tab to the Analysis tool:

https://www.chess.com/analysis?tab=analysis

Paste your PGN code into the window under "Load From FEN/PGN(s)" and click the green "Add Game(s)" button.

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It will load the game from the starting position.  Use the scroll bar to get to the move where you want the puzzle to begin; in this case, after Black's 16th move.

You could also click on the first move and step through the game using the arrow keys or the graphical "Forward" key [right-pointing triangle].

Click the "Set up Position" icon:

Hit the green "Load" button:

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At this point, you can look at the eval to figure out how much work you have ahead of you:  if there is only one winning line and the rest are much worse alternatives, you've passed the first hurdle [there still might be tweaks to make it more "puzzle-like"].

But if the eval shows multiple winning lines, you'll have to repeat this process.

If you want to tweak the starting position, click the icon for going back to the beginning [the arrow on the far left] and click "Set up position".  You can edit the position by moving and adding/subtracting pieces to try and make the puzzle better.

- You can move pieces around by clicking on them and dragging them to a different position.  If you place a piece on a square already occupied, the original piece will disappear.

- You can add pieces by clicking and dragging a piece from the right side where all pieces are displayed to the desired square.

- You can subtract pieces by clicking and dragging them off of the board.

- You can also remove everything from the board by clicking the trash can icon towards the upper right.  This is more efficient when your puzzle only has a few pieces.

- You can change things like whose move it is and whether either side can castle [long and short].

As you modify the position, you can see the eval bar on the left changing.  So if you're White and you make a change that causes the eval bar to drop way down, that was a bad change.

Once you're happy, click "Load" and check out the new eval.  If it's still not right, click "Set up position", retweak, and "Load" again.

Keep repeating this until you get a puzzle with just one obviously superior line.

Remember that you can choose what moves the opponent will make as long as they aren't blunders; sub-optimals are fine.

Play the move sequence you'd like.  Then hit the "Share" icon, choose the PGN tab, and copy the code to a text editor and save the file [in case something happens while you're on the next step].

If you intend to send this to someone, you can open a DM in a new window and use the "Insert chess game or diagram" button

Click on the "Load from PGN" triangle

paste the PGN into the window below, and click "Add Game(s)"

For some reason, the position loads at the end of the puzzle.  Click the "Back to the beginning" button

and you can play it from the start.

Click the "Theme" section and check the "Puzzle" box so that it will hide the moves.  

Additionally, if the puzzle is from Black's perspective, "Flip Board" box:

Lately, I've been saving my puzzles in the Library [topic for another blog], the advantage being they can be easily saved and accessed and shared without having to worry about the underlying PGN.

Great puzzle-making is an art which also makes one appreciate how much work goes into getting it "just right".

There's a lot of detail here and I probably left something out or didn't state something quite accurately.  If so, let me know.