[Checkmate in 8] Corridors of Possibilities

Great puzzle my friend, (catchy name btw) with intricate ideas as how to attack whites king. However I... h8... I mean Bishop on h8 can be improved with a knight replacement.

This puzzle also inspired me to reintroduce my old puzzle "Butterfly" , in a new fashion, called "Black Butterfly"

It was here in one of the original versions of my puzzle. I will admit I was annoyed it gave more than one option to checkmate White on the last move of the variation I offered in the diagram and changed it very late to offer a variation of White's responses where people wouldn't have to guess my moves, even though the puzzle is pretty much solved by that point.

I could present the puzzle as a still position or in the interactive puzzle form. Puzzles posted in the interactive puzzle form usually get more attention and are more user-friendly for the general solver/playerbase/audience on this platform (they also oblige the puzzlemaker to provide an answer that can be validated or unvalidated by its peers (i.e. I had an unfortunate blind spot in my last selfmate which was pointed out by Arisktotle)), so I tried with care to build a variation where there is only one move the user could play according to White's moves to get to the objective.

Sure, other variations (4.Kh2 and 4.Kg2) contain duals and the solver, in an ideal world, should understand them too.

The idea of putting a piece on h8 was to prevent a dual where the queen could go on both h6 and h8. My first try was with a knight on h8. I also considered other ideas like a knight on h7, a pawn on h7 (both of which introduced duals) and the bishop on h8, and I finally settled on the latter, even if it looked less pretty.

After I got down the general ideas and the general form of the puzzle I wanted to make, most of my energy (and time) went to make the final touches, my final verifications, and to make sure such a non-guessing path existed. I hesitated a bit, but went for the bishop on h8 in the end. This was my final change.

Another (even earlier) version of the puzzle (while I was constructing it) featured a black pawn on e7 blocking the control the White queen could have had on the g7 square. I changed it to a white pawn on e7 to eliminate a dual as the black pawn was not fundamental to the puzzle and it did not affect the length of the checkmate.

I see you epurate/simplify your puzzles too, as you got rid of an unnecessary pawn in your remake of Butterfly.

My friend I see in your reply that you mentioned Master @Arisktotle. You better kill the h8 bishop and replace it with the knight. If he sees that unnecessary third bishop there... He is going to be real upset. Oh boy he is going to be real real... upset. So now you are warned!

Yes in the original "Butterfly" the pawn was there, however, I was torn between having the pawn there and not having it in the black-addition. So I made the decision to remove the pawn.

As I can see you have a keen eye for details my friend. Bravo!

And btw... I like your style... many other's would have given up the "secret move", of the "Butterfly" however you are a real gentleman of a chess-puzzler! So much obliged for that 1!

Sure, other variations (4.Kh2 and 4.Kg2) contain duals, and the solver should grasp them as well. rainbow obby