Stuck in 900 puzzle rating

Newbie here and I'm having trouble getting past the 900s in the puzzle ratings. Which lessons should I study? A lot of the solutions don't make sense - at least not yet.

When trying to solve a puzzle, look at each of your pieces one by one and trace where they can move with your eyes (even if it's through other pieces, which will be useful as you get better). So for a rook on a1, you'd move your eyes up along the a file, a2, a3, a4 etc. and then across a1, b1, c1, etc.

The knowledge needed to go from puzzles rated 900 to 1100 is along the lines of...

1. "Hanging" pieces. If something is undefended you can capture it for free.

2. Counting puzzles, if you have 3 attackers on a piece that is defended twice, you can win that piece.

3. Mate in 1. At the beginning of a puzzle, no matter how hard or easy it is, it's very useful to look at each of your pieces, one by one, to see whether they can check the enemy king. Look at each of those checks to see whether it's checkmate.

4. Back rank checkmate. This is where a rook or queen gives checkmate and the enemy king is trapped by his own pawns. Sometimes it takes multiple moves, but the theme is very useful to remember (for games too, not just puzzles).

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5. Basic non-checkmating patterns:

Feel free to google each of the following. I list them in pairs that are similar. E.g. pins and skewers are similar, discovered check is similar to discovered attack, etc.

Pins and Skewers
Forks and Double Attacks
Removing the Defender and Overworked Piece
Discovered Check and Discovered Attack

Chess.com has a list of something like 30, 40 or 50 tactical themes. Frankly that's not useful for new players, it's way too much information. The basic patterns are the ones I listed above. 900 rated puzzles aren't going to have e.g. clearance sacrifices.

Awesome! Thanks for the info.

That's a good inventory of reductions, llama47! I've seen some llama's around here. Are they reducible to one?

In your record, I can see a lot of examples where you "think" 20 or less seconds (in one instance it is 8 seconds) and you make the wrong move. It seems like you don't calculate stuff, you just make some good-looking move and hope that it works.

I'm about to go to sleep, so maybe I'm tired, but I'm not sure what you mean.

Past llama accounts were me. I'm the same guy.

I'll remember that when I encounter another llama. Sleep well!

First thing I do in any puzzle is see if you can check off the king or play off the king. Trick with puzzles is that once you make a move, the opposite side has to react in a logical way. A simple development move or castling (even though it would be logical in a real game) usually isn't going to be the move in a puzzle. Also, if there's a really logical choice, i.e. your opponent is hanging a rook, always look twice because usually those just to waylay you. For example, don't just promote a pawn to a queen. Always look to see if an underpromotion would serve you better. 

Today's Daily Puzzle is a perfect example of what I mean when I say always look at the enemy king first. :-)

I really need to improve my calculations. I was trying to improve my speed for better scores but all I'm doing is rushing and making it worse

Don't do that. With guessing instead of calculating, you win a tiny amount of points if you are right, and lose a lot of points if you are wrong. The risk/reward ratio is terrible. Not to mention that you probably learn nothing and improve nothing if you just guess.