The Two Rook Mate

Hello everyone and welcome back to Aviation18's Chess Corner! I apologise for the lack of blog posts recently, so I will compensate for those blog posts not written.

The two rook mate is perhaps the easiest checkmate in chess-one can perform the two rook mate with a queen and a rook-two queens or 2 rooks. First, try solving the puzzle below:

Solved it? The trick is really to have your rooks close to each other to protect each other, and what I would call 'keep the king under a vice grip'. In sense, we are reducing the number of rows the king can travel to. The checkmate is also referred to as a 'Ladder Checkmate'-the reason it is called this is because the rooks are climbing up and down the rows-much like the rooks climbing up and down the rungs of a ladder.

Good luck with your two rooks mates!