GM chess composition

Someone asked me in a now removed topic about a GM level chess composition.

The World Federation of Chess Compositions has a list of Grandmaster level composers, dating back to 1972.

That doesn't include the many talented composers who lived and died before 1972.

The Meson chess problem database has many of those problems, with the key move hidden.

Here's a FEN of a single GM level composition. I won't say the name of the composer, just to be coy.

  1r1R2b1/3B4/3p4/N1pkB3/3b3K/p1P5/qP3N2/3QR1n1 w - - 0 1

White moves. Mate-in-2 against any defense

Edit: double post. 

I don't know how to display a FEN position as a diagram. If someone could do that for me, I'd appreciate it.

To insert a diagram, click the chessboard icon above the post box. When setting up a position, you can tick the 'puzzle' option (in the Theme section) after playing the correct moves, to hide the solution. Here's the problem you gave...

This is a fine piece of work but not too difficult, and I solved it in a few minutes. The quality of a composed problem depends on many things; difficulty is only one aspect and not a hugely important one.

I actually saw your interesting post in the other thread before it got deleted, and you prompted me to check out the World Chess Problem Solving Championship, the details of which are on the WFCC site. This would be a good source to find examples of very hard problems. In these events, all kinds of problems are used, and the 2-movers section requires you to solve three Mates-in-2 in 20 minutes. For the 2018 Championship, the hardest Mate-in-2 is shown below - it was solved by 66 of the 83 contestants. (The hardest problem was a selfmate that was solved by no-one - these are official GM and IM solvers we're talking about). I had a go at this 2-mover and thought I cracked it in 8 minutes, but when I checked the solution it turns out that I was caught by one of the tries! (A 'try' means a white move that almost works but is defeated by a unique black move.) 

Thanks

I think it is 1. Ne4xc5

If 1. ... Bd5

   2.  Qb5 #

If 1. .... Qb7 or 1. ... Qb8 or 1. ... Qc8

   2. Qxe6 #

If 1. ... Qe8 or 1. ... Qg8

   2. Bxg2 #

If 1. ... e5

   2. Qe6 #

If 1. ... f5

   2. Bxg2 #

If 1. ... Bxh3

   2. ... Qf3 #

Oh, I see. I did get it correct. I'm still fumbling around chess.com.

Good job in solving this tough one! There's only one inaccuracy in your solution, which I give below in white text (good way to avoid spoilers, in case anyone else wants to work it out):

>The key 1.Nexc5! involves two threats, 2.Qxe6 and 2.Bxg2. There are three black moves that deal with both threats, and you gave the correct white mating responses for two of them (1...Bd5 and 1...Bxh3), but the third one, 1...Qg8 is actually met by 2.Qb7.<

Good catch.