The Perfect Pair - Mate in 4

I composed a new puzzle after a long while, and I hope you all enjoy it. I would put its difficulty at about 1300 or so - have fun!

The Perfect Pair - Mate in 4

You revised it slightly and yet I still had trouble finding the checkmate in 4. I eventually got it, but it certainly goes counter-intuitive to my thinking xD. Nice puzzle. It kind of reminds me of when I studied some famous attacking games. Interestingly (with "attack" in mind) I could predict Alekhine's moves fairly well. However, when I got to Tal's games - I could barely predict any! Part of it is the chess personality, but a big part of it was just me not thinking about the position the way Tal did. After several games, I eventually began to predict his moves easier than before (still not that well though xD). 

This puzzle reminds me a bit of Tal's line of thinking

My God - The honour. Also, thanks for the feedback, it's certainly encouraging to hear how puzzled the audience was. Thank you.

Of course, the difficult part is testing to see if you could spot this in an actual game. When I do puzzles, I try to imitate OTB conditions the best I can (such as trying to "forget" there is a forced checkmate). It is not just this puzzle, but all puzzles; even if you do not show "mate in x moves" (which many puzzles do), the one solving knows there is a "solution" and therefore thinks differently about the position compared to how they would normally approach it.

Good puzzle created though

That's very true. For example, when I do tactics I simply seek the solution rather than assessing the puzzle in its entirety. As a result I develop my ability to see through complexities in matches, but as for the puzzles themselves, I usually miss out on the principles and concepts being taught. This can result in a situation where a player is exceptional in finding wins in difficult positions but can't quite seem to create these puzzling situations at will, or at least it doesn't match their solving rate. That's why I also make it a point to analyse some instructional positions whenever I can.

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