collection of good puzzle

Post #2's problem is badly cooked. There is a mate in 2.

 BigDoggProblem, I had a look at that webpage you quote - as a matter of interest why is it hosted on a Finnish mobile phone & broadband website if it has any proper authority ? And anyway, who or what is the The World Federation for Chess Composition (WFCC) ?  (It has replaced the PCCC!)

To what organizations is it affiliated & by whom (or what) is it accredited ? Apart from a reference to it's organizing comittee, I can't find anything about it on the FIDE website ! It appears to be a collection of people who've appointed themselves as the judges of what a composition should be.
If you can find a set of rules on the FIDE website that govern chess composition then I may change my mind. 

The fact is anyone can set themselves up as arbiters of this or that & publish an official-looking webpage(s) but it doesn't mean they have any authority.

Of course if you're talking about puzzles involved in competitive tournaments, that's another matter - then there have to be rules to ensure fairness. But for ones composed purely for fun, why shouldn't there be a lot more licence given ?

I think in the end this may just come down to a matter of personal taste.

The WFCC [formerly PCCC] is a FIDE affiliate. http://www.fide.com/fide/directory/affiliated-organizations.html?comid=80&task=committee

These rules are followed by composers around the world. They are long-established conventions and are followed by practically every problem magazine in print.

Even if they didn't exist, the other rules of chess still do. Checkmate is defined by the rules. Break the rules, and it is no longer checkmate anymore. If they can be violated to attain the mate, they can be violated to escape it as well.

"Mate!"

"Wait - how did the Bishop just move to c6?"

"It jumped over a pawn, of course."

"OK, if pieces can jump over each other now, then bK jumps to h8."

"But that's cheating!"

"Cheating is such a harsh word. It's a matter of personal taste."

O/k  BigDoggProblem, I don't want to get into a protracted debate about this but I'm still a little puzzled about this WFCC to which you refer (formerly the PCCC). I've just been on the FIDE website & a search for WFCC returns no results ! Isn't that odd for an affiliated organization ?

Furthermore, although a search for PCCC does return several results, it's not at all clear that it's the same PCCC that is represented in the link you quoted-for example I can't find a single link from the FIDE site to the one you gave !

I think you may have misunderstood where I stand: The rules of chess are precise & they should be rigorously applied in all games - no question about it. Any competitive activity between two or more people has to be governed by rules so that would include composition tournaments as well. It's also taken as read that from the starting position of any puzzle, the normal rules of the game should apply (I didn't mean to suggest otherwise !).

But when it comes to puzzles created solely for people's private amusement, I don't have a problem if the composer wants to take a few liberties with the initial position but then all the normal rules apply. I've solved several of them that had illegal positions but it just doesn't bother me - that's what I meant by it being a matter of taste.

Please don't send the 'Puzzle Police' around to my house    

Yes - bad web design for a prominent organization like FIDE is odd. But it wouldn't be the first time that Google found something on a site that I could not find through the site's internal links.

And we don't bother with the 'puzzle police' anymore - ran out of money to run the jails. We just send a puzzle assassin now.

stephen_33, on an aesthetic note, doesn't #21's diagram look nicer than #1's? I mean, why have all those extra pieces on the board when they aren't needed?

Bad web design or something else perhaps ?  It still feels very odd that a (supposedly) respectable organization like the WFCC wouldn't have it's own dedicated website instead of being hosted on a Finnish mobile phone website. Don't you find that even a little bit suspect ?

Incidentally, I've just Googled both names & the only relevant results that appear are the Wiki' entries-there's something wrong there !

On your point about unnecessary pieces, usually I do like things to be uncluttered but in the case of puzzles, the extraneous pieces serve a useful purpose - they add complexity because you have to work out which ones are active & which redundant. For me that makes a puzzle more interesting but then that's another one of those matters of taste...

Anyway, I'd better give anupralhad the 'heads up' to watch out for that puzzle assassin !

Edit:  Well done for spotting the mate in two moves in your post #22 - I missed that.

When I got into solving composed problems over 10 years ago, the FIDE codex was already well-established. I know from experience that the problemist world follows it. I googled the link to find what I already knew to exist. It's easier to post a link than write out all the rules from scratch.

If you are still skeptical, I invite you to google the websites of established problem magazines: StrateGems, Die Schwalbe, MatPlus, The Problemist, etc. Ask the editors - they'll tell you all about it.

[I will warn in advance that the lavish life style of the chess playing community has not flowed into the problem world. The websites tend to be set up by a single volunteer donating some of his personal online storage space.]

The experienced solver won't be slowed even a nanosecond by the 'window dressing' when it's so obviously window dressing. If anything, the presence of so much of it makes it even more obvious. I mean, who would think that wPa2 in post #1 will actually do something?! And if the composer has placed that pawn on the board, he obviously does not care about having needless pieces, which is a red flag to watch out for more of them.

As for spotting the mate in 2, my computer found that. I was testing the problem as a mate in 3, trying to improve it, but the computer found several moves that forced mate in 3, as well as the shorter solution. Sorry for not making that clear.

Anulpralhad can breathe easy. We usually don't hit people who aren't speaking out against the brotherhood.

Over 10 years ?  You're well ahead of me - I've been at it seriously for less than a year now. It was the main reason I came to this site in the first place so as to exercise my mind at least once per day. Originally, I wasn't going to play any chess but you know how easy it is to get drawn in.

What source of puzzles do you use most ? I like the ones on GameKnot - seriously difficult at times & much more suited to adults, unlike the ones on this site ! I had a look at a few of the ones you list above but couldn't find StrateGems & Die Schwalbe appears promising but is all in German (even after translation, I'm having trouble with the piece notation), however The Problemist looks good.

On the subject of superfluous pieces, you don't pick the best example - that pawn is patently redundant I admit but it is possible to place minor pieces in such a way that leaves doubt in the mind.

Honest of you to admit it was your software that found that mate in 2. What kind of app' do you use ? - I've never used any chess engine but I did download Critter from this site a while ago. I hoped it might help me make sense of an old chess problem for which I don't have the solution but I've never been able to use the thing (it opens in an MSDOS type of window without any instructions on how to proceed !)

I'm rather 'old school' anyway, so If I can't do it with brain power I prefer to just hit the solution button.

Glad to hear 'The Brotherhood' hasn't taken out any contracts on us - I'll sleep easier tonight    

Wow, the StrateGems website has been taken down. It was mainly useful for contact information anyway. Here's what that page used to look like:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100709184551/http://www.strategems.org/editors/editors.htm

I use the magazines I mentioned as sources. There are also websites like http://www.softdecc.com/pdb/index.pdb

For computer testing, there is popeye [solving engine] and olive [a Graphical User Interface for popeye]. The setup is a bit technical, but for freeware, no program solves as wide a variety of problems as popeye.

Honestly, this thread has some really solid puzzle picks, love how diverse the suggestions are. If anyone here enjoys puzzles beyond chess too. Then give a shot to NYT Letter Boxed puzzle. it’s a word game where you form words from letters around a square, trying to use them all in as few words as possible. Sometimes it becomes hard to find the answers for such situations and I recently stumbled upon this site that posts NYT word puzzles solutions to find answers LetterBoxedAnswer.net if you're stuck or want to check your approach. It's a fun break from tactical chess puzzles while still keeping the brain sharp. I would love hear your thoughts on it.