Presented at my chess club - Mate in 5

@Rocky64 @Arisktotle 

I really have no idea about all of that stuff... all I was doing was replicating a problem on the board that was presented at my local chess club in which many highly rated players were around the table trying to solve - and couldn't.  It was intriguing and so I took a picture of the position so I could replicate it at home.  I have no idea how they came to that position, or if it was a problem from a book or where it originated... any of that.  I was only showing what was on a board at a club.    

@Rocky64: That clears it up though we remain in a twilight zone. The threat after the key is a short and unthematic mate which makes the whole threat-department sort of irrelevant. Goes to show that composing is no more than 50% science!

Some people find an old painted canvas in the attic and take it to a car boot sale to catch a dime for it. Then somebody recognizes the van Gogh style and art experts start a fight on whether it is genuine. These people are not to blame. Neither are you.

I mean yea, you couldn't have said it in a better analogy.  Happy to have turned over the van Gogh for those who can appreciate seeing what I can't. 

Don't worry about my discussion with Arisktotle. As composers we are interested in the minute details of constructing a problem, like why a piece is necessary or whether it's superfluous. It's not uncommon for published problems to have constructional flaws, so we were just wondering if this fine problem you quoted could be a bit better.

As a regular solver you only need to worry about understanding the solution and the idea being shown. That's why back in post#5 I tried to explain the 5-move solution and mentioned things like White's threat after each move (it explains why each black move is forced). Most composed problems show a specific idea or theme and in this case it is (roughly speaking) the decoy of Black's rook to an unfavourable square, which I also mentioned.

How very strange, I also presented this to the stockfish engine and it failed to come up with the 5 move mate. Komodo did the trick, though. I apologize for the incorrect analysis on my part, though I stand by my opinion on puzzle presentation.

Yup.. I think this 20 yr old program is still better than any of the latest engines. 

Check your default Stockfish settings. It seems to need a depth level of 20 to find the M5. What's really strange is that even at depth 20 it can't solve a Mate in 2 problem found at this thread: Puzzled: Two Move Checkmate. That's solved only at depth 22. That's why I leave the default setting at the max 99 on this site. 

Doesn't the 99 setting take up a whole bunch of space? My computer can't handle anything above 50!

@Malishious What do you mean by "space"? Are you saying that when you use the Chess.com analysis board on your web browser, that noticeably slows down your other computer tasks? How old is your computer!?