Up, up, and selfmate in 16 moves!

It's White to move and selfmate themselves in 16 moves. Up, up, and good luck!

Thanks!  

what is this!

but nice puzzle anyway

Hmm ... could you get rid of all that stuff in the lower-right corner if you changed the stipulation to series-selfmate?

Indeed that is technically possible, but it is rather super easy to show the affect in a series-mover, IMO. Doing it where Black also has the move makes it much more challenging to do, but it possible as my problem demonstrates. Their are all sorts of combos to try out!

I don't see why making a "block" to allow black to move is hard (if that is what you meant).

Oh, making a block for black isn't hard-making the problem dual free and keeping the promotions unique is the challenge here.

Why wouldn't that be just as difficult in a series setting? (Not trying to argue; genuinely curious.)

Well it's I say what I do because of two things:

1) Finding a plan on how to force Black to mate is much harder since Black isn't a sitting duck like they are in series movers.

2) Pieces must be diverted to lock up Black, making less pieces available that might be critical for cook stopping.

That's not just a good idea but it is the proper way to present a problem with such a simple back-and-forth mechanism.

RewanDemontay likes to encode his ideas in a straightforward setting but he could achieve much more if he includes more thematic units, more tries and variations in his constructions. He could for instance locate the bB near the wK such that it would alternate between covering and releasing a flight square of that king. And subsequently add a device that woud resolve the parity problem. Obviously that is much easier with knight-promotions than with bishop-promotions but solving such challenges makes composing more interesting. And it would keep this problem in the selfmate domain.

By the way, chess composing and solving on "social media" appears to have a different formula from the traditional problemists publications. A selfmate is almost self-explanatory but a series-mover is an awkward challenge in these environments. They don't care that much about composition content, but mainly relate to what the puzzle interfaces show and support. Which is way, way, way below par - if ye know what I mean.