How can you deliver checkmate with a king?

I did read it carefully. Attack is a verb. It's not a noun, it's the action.

It's really quite simple. The piece that attacks the enemy king square is the piece that is checking. Think about it, if it were not for the action of checking, why would there be any need to escape the attack?

There is no mention of the "state" of checkmate. That is something you are making up and wishing was part of the rules. It is not in the rules. But the rules DO mention attack. Which is a verb describing the action. If you want to wish it were the "state" of checkmate then all the other pieces play a part too. For example, in this diagram, the bishop, the king, and the rook are all part of the so called "state" of checkmate. But only one piece is checking the enemy king. And that piece is the rook.

If you believe the rules of chess are fiction then we will probably just have to agree to disagree. I'm not interpreting the rules. I'm applying them. I'm not inserting my own wishes or beliefs about what they mean. They mean what they say. A check (or checkmate) is an attack on the square the enemy king occupies. It's really very simple. And it's not fiction.

Check is just one aspect of checkmate. The rules cover every other single aspect of checkmate. They speak for all of it. That's why they exist.

Yes, attack is a verb - but a double meaning verb. Just as "check", "checkmate"'and others we discussed. And it's also a noun.

When you read the laws (both FIDE and USCF) you will find that the word "attack" in all contexts refers to a state, never to an action. Common expressions are "ünder attack", "is (not) being attacked", "would expose the king to attack", "occupying a square attacked by an opponent". Even when the text reads "the piece which attacks the king" it is a statement about one position with a threat but not about the action of the attacker which changed the state from "not attacking king" to "ättacking the king".

An example for the action of attacking would be: "I attacked the queen with my bishop" That refers to the move preceding the attack, a move which changed the state of the queen from being "not under attack" to "being under attack". That is an action! For the particular word "attack" the resulting new state also implies a threat to capture the queen but that does not count as an action yet.

The word/term "attack" was introduced in the laws to avoid the delusion that a follow-up capture is always legally possible. For instance it is illegal to capture a king or move a pinned attacker. Yet the laws give power to the "under attack" state by demanding that the king runs from it even when the same laws say that capturing a king is illegal. This issue only applies to the state of "under attack" as the action of attacking is already in the past. I know this from an arbiter but hearsay is not proof. You can verify though that there are no attack actions in the laws though they are common in chess talk, like: "Carlsen attacked on the queen side".

And none of that has anything to do with the fact the rules of chess remain the same. A check and a checkmate both are described as a piece attacking the square the enemy king occupies. That's the part you just can't get around.

So in all our examples it's the piece that attacks the king's square that checks. Not the piece that reveals the attack as in a discovered check. No amount of floundering, obfuscation, diversion, or wishful thinking is about to change that.

So I'll ask again. In the most recent example, post number 184 where the bishop has revealed the rook check. The rules of chess describe all the possible ways to parry an attack (or check) on the king. Do those possible options apply to the bishop, or the rook?

the rook checks. But that's off topic, since we're talking about specifically checkmate. Checkmate is a position in which a king is in check and has no way to escape, and the piece that makes the position a checkmate position, is the piece that checkmates.

Yes. And that piece is the rook. Because if we go back to our rulebook, checkmate is described. Here is the description in the rules.

4. Objective and Scoring 
4A. Checkmate.
The objective of each of the two players in a game of chess is to win the game by checkmating the opponent’s king. 
A player’s king is checkmated when the square it occupies is attacked by one or more of the opponent’s pieces and 
the player has no move that escapes such attack. See also Rule 12, Check; 12C, Responding to check; and 13A,

Because the rook is checking, which you now apparently agree with, that is WHY it is also checkmating. Checkmate is the attack on the square the enemy king occupies and the player has no move that escapes that attack.

The bishop is not attacking (the piece that moved). Instead the revealed piece is attacking, the rook. The attacking piece, per the rules of chess, is the one that checks. There is no getting around the basic fundamental fact. There are no other pieces on the board attacking, no other pieces checking, therefore it's literally impossible for any other piece to checkmate (the action verb) the enemy king.

Provide evidence of that. Like, what was white's last move? If it was a rook move, then the rook, by moving, changed a "playing" position into a "checkmate" position; and, therefore, checkmated. But if white's last move was a bishop move, then the bishop checkmated. Not to mention, you are repeatedly providing the same source as evidence even though you misread it, the USCF rulebook doesn't actually say which piece checkmated, all it does is describe the state, position, noun of checkmate, not the action, verb of checkmating!

It makes no difference what the last move was. The rules describe check, and checkmate, as an attack on the square the king occupies. So it makes no difference what the last move was, what matters is the current position, which is the rook attacking the square the king is on.

The rules make no allowances for the previous move. Nor do the rules care about your insistence of nouns, verbs, action, states, etc. The rules only care about what comprises check, and checkmate. Which has been pointed out to you several times.

The rules do not specify which exact piece checkmates, only that ANY piece that attacks the enemy kings square from which the king cannot escape. No other piece on the board, just the piece that is attacking.

So you agree with me on that! You're one step closer to being correct. Now you just need to figure out which piece's movement causes the black king to be put in checkmate.

Imagine that you're in a room with an activated death laser pointing at you, blocked by a rock. If the rock moved, would an observer say that the rock killed you? Or was it the laser?

the rock, because the rock moving resulted in my death

But it was the laser that killed you, correct?

the laser did not do anything that resulted in my death, besides existing. The rock's movement caused me to be zapped to death.

That is absolutely untrue. I repeat: you can't read. A checkmate is nowhere described as a piece attacking the king square. "Attacking the king square" is just one of the conditions of the checkmate state. If that was the only one then check would be the same as checkmate. The missing condition is that "the opponent has no legal move" which you can split in 3 parts: (1) Other pieces attack potential escape squares of the king. (2) The opponent's own pieces block the remaining neighboring squares of the king (3) There are no opponent pieces which can legally interfere on the check line. The first two parts identify units in the diagram which also participate in the checkmate besides the check giving unit. There are at least two. No single unit can do the task of controlling all the relevant squares alone! Technically impossible.

What is also untrue is that check and checkmate only feature in the rules as states - which would bar access to the actions of delivering/producing check or checkmate. Read them! This leads to the following paragraph:

The joke is that you insist on deducing the "checkmater" from the checkmate diagram. Which you can with the help of retro-analysis in some diagrams but not in others (like this one). The rules only address chess and chess actions in a forward time line. First there is the action of checkmating and then there is its result, the state of checkmate. Whenever you start from a checkmate diagram (state) you have already skipped over the preceding action of checkmating (= delivering/producing checkmate).

Yes, the rules do not say something like "rook checkmates". Only that the checking piece (in this case the rook) checkmates. The rules do not recognize which piece moves. That is pretty clear. They only recognize which piece is checking. Which you agree is the rook. So I'll post the rule again.

4. Objective and Scoring 
4A. Checkmate.
The objective of each of the two players in a game of chess is to win the game by checkmating the opponent’s king. 
A player’s king is checkmated when the square it occupies is attacked by one or more of the opponent’s pieces and 
the player has no move that escapes such attack. See also Rule 12, Check; 12C, Responding to check; and 13A,

No mention whatsoever of which piece moves, nor does it mention the previous move. The rules do not care about that. Checkmate is achieved (in this case) when the rook attacks the enemy king's square. The white king never does that, therefore is not checking, nor is it checkmating.

Since the king move (or any other piece that reveals an attack) is not checking, it's impossible for it to be checkmating. The rules are pretty clear on that. If you read the rule, you will see the word "attack", which is a verb. The rook is currently attacking the enemy king. Think of it this way the white king moving is the last recorded move of the game, but the second to last action taken in the game. The rook checkmating is the very last action.

Of course the rules do not say that, but it's certainly implied by the words "square it occupies is attacked". Because if the rook is not attacking the square the enemy king occupies, which piece is?

At this point I think he is just trolling. He knows very well which piece checkmates (and he knows very well that it's the laser that kills) but just wants to see how far he can get with an argument that holds absolutely no water. There isn't even any gray area, since the rules are very clear and very specific.

Good example by the way.

So the rook checks. And, because the rook covers all the possible escape squares, the black king is in checkmate. The position below is a checkmate position. However, just because the rook checks does not mean the rook checkmates. The piece that moves, and, due to its action, results in an enemy king being in checkmate, is the piece that causes the enemy king to be checkmated, through its action. That piece is the king.

You're losing this argument for the simple reason that you're providing invalid, terribly-thought-out "evidence".

If anyone here is trolling, it's you.

Imagine this sort of defense in a court of law. A defendant is on trial for manslaughter, because he ran over a pedestrian. He was just happily motoring along at a comfortable 60mph but a slowpoke in front of him was slowing down for some unknown reason.

The slowpoke then decides he had better pull over, because in front of him is a pedestrian which he can avoid, but behind him is speeder who is oblivious and cannot avoid. So the slowpoke pulls over allowing the speeder to continue on at a joyful 60mph. The speeder sees the pedestrian much too late and that's the end of the pedestrian.

Now, there is no physical way the speeder could have run over the pedestrian with the slowpoke in front of him. It would have been a rear end collision instead. And the pedestrian would have continued on crossing the street and it would be a different ending.

So at court the defendants attorney says it's actually the slowpokes fault for getting out of the way. The speeder did nothing wrong and argues the mishap never would have occurred had the slowpoke just stayed in front of the defendant. How is the jury likely to judge this argument?

That's simply common sense and grammar.