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Tyzer

I'm trying to find a certain mate-in-two puzzle which I saw once but can't quite recall the exact layout of...was hoping that someone here would be able to point me in the right direction. The "theme" of the puzzle is as shown below:

 

I.e. the theme is that there are two possible mating squares being guarded by two different pieces, and that sacrificing a piece on the "intersection point" of those two pieces' paths means that whichever guarding piece captures the sacrifice will block the other guarding piece, allowing a checkmate. The position above is a rather crude reconstruction of the puzzle based on what I recall...I'm pretty sure the original puzzle was more elegant and had less material disparity between the two sides (plus, I think my reconstruction may have multiple solutions as I slapped it together quite quickly).

So, does anyone here happen to know of this puzzle in its original form? (If it helps, I'm pretty certain the two "guarding pieces" must be a bishop and a rook, since knights and pawns can't be blocked while a queen would still guard the mating squares after capturing the sacrifice.)

bridabomb
[COMMENT DELETED]
rooperi

If you can remember the exact position of at least some pieces, I can search my database of about 200,000. But you have to be sure of those

Tyzer
rooperi wrote:

If you can remember the exact position of at least some pieces, I can search my database of about 200,000. But you have to be sure of those


Unfortunately there's too many possible positions of the bishop and rook to pin down the exact position, so I don't think it's viable...in fact, I think the original puzzle had the rook somewhere on the sixth rank guarding either g6 or h6 instead, but I couldn't figure out a way to recreate it in that configuration, so I put together this version instead.

heinzie

I'll find this one :p just watch this space

heinzie

First try

Tyzer

Wow, it's been a while since I even remembered this thread. Perhaps I should have updated that I think I managed to reconstruct the puzzle in this thread. In any case, yours looks neat too...I presume the key move is 1.Qe5?

heinzie

OK, in that case I don't know. Do you remember where you saw it? Via a friend, a newspaper, internet page, chess magazine, a book?

Tyzer

From my chess club's coach, but it was quite some time ago (and I was relatively young at the time, and we kept changing coaches around that period) so I don't even remember his name. Anyway, thanks for the cool new puzzle! It's certainly refreshing to see an entirely different setup for it, after all the time I spent poking around variations on the position in that other thread.

heinzie

It's quite possible he made it himself to show you an idea in a practical-looking position. In any case this Chess Mystery seems to remain a... mystery. I can't find it