Mate in four(720)

White in four    by  L. V. Yarosh,    1983

Now with edited solutions

That's not one of the 4 main variations - which I knew of course! But I found this one as well.

Simply the best problem ever!

I have a friend who made the first cyclic version of this theme but he was too lazy to publish it before someone else overtook him. His (many) versions are probably better than any as they demonstrated even extra underpromotions on top of the thematic ones! Tim Krabbé published a booklet with different non-cyclic realizations of the theme by authors copycatting the original.

Since I know this problem, I no longer believe that anything is impossible to compose even when it may take 100 years like for this one.

Again my tunnel vision has me miss the intended beauty of the puzzle.This variation is what I used to solve the puzzle.Looking at the solution to this puzzle was actually harder to decipher than the puzzle I knew you would have more insight to it......Yarosh published three of these in the magazine Shakhmaty vs SSSR the first in March (which had a bad key and is not on here )   and then this one in August. I am posting his follow up to this one which you probably know also ,but just in case and maybe someone else would like it.

White in four

by the way the Author called 720 a four fold Fleck with four Karlstrom defenses.

The author needed only one term to describe his creation which is Babson task. This task was the holy grail of problem composing for a century and Yarosh was the first one to realize it while many thought it was impossible. Even the news of his 1st version with the "ugly" capture of a piece on the key move spread across the planet in a matter of days and was seen as a miracle achievement. The key move on the 2nd was perfect and stunned everyone again. Since his Babson versions it is hard to score in (direct mate) composition tournaments with AUW problems as they are all dwarfed by Yarosh's Babsons.

I'll look at his 3rd version which I haven't seen before later. I do know several composers created Babson versions with the black king in different places which is apparently some kind of challenge.

I edited the puzzle to show the babson task it achieved. Most of the puzzles in this chapter are self mates,there are  only 10 of them shown..... Yarosh dedicated the second one to Pierre Drumare (was he inspired by Dumare's  earlier composition?)

You can lookup the Babson task on Wikipedia. It also has all the information on Pierre Drumare. And it mentions Hoffmann as the composer of the first cyclic version but my dutch friend was just a bit earlier I believe but didn't publish.

The last diagram is not as good as the first one because the key move takes a flight square. The threat of discovered check is easy to parry because moving the knight again gives the flight square back to the black king. As noted on Wikipedia the pawn move key of the 1st diagram is perfect because it is the natural thematic preamble to the subsequent promotion feast.