Mate in 1: knight to g3 (e4)
li-06Jy4naming tag (square·N)Opens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Mate in 1: find the move after which the enemy king has no escape.
Difficulty 1628 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A mate in one hides among forcing checks. Run through every check you can give: does it cover all the king's escape squares, is the checking piece safe or supported, and can nothing block or capture it? If yes, that is the mate.
General method: before you move, list the forcing candidates — every check, every capture, every direct threat — and calculate those first. The solution to a tactic is almost always among them.
Position on the board
White: king h1, queen c2, rook g1 f2, bishop b2 d3, knight h2, pawn g2 a3 c3 e3 h3 c4 d4.
Black: king g8, queen h5, rook f6 a8, bishop b7, knight e4, pawn f5 b6 d6 e6 a7 c7 g7 h7.
14 white and 14 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 18.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 2 points of material (35 against 33; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 18, with 44 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 8. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The Black king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
18... Ng3#
Why it works
- Great move! knight to g3 keeps the pressure (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 1.
Move by move
- 18… Ng3# — knight to g3 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Smothered mate
The king is buried under its own pieces — only a knight can reach it.
The smothered mate suffocates a king buried under its own army: every neighboring square is blocked by friendly pieces, and the knight — needing no open lines — delivers the blow. The classic mechanism: knight check, king hides in the corner, a queen sacrifice forces a rook to plug the last hole, and the knight mates. Look for a cornered king surrounded by its own pieces and a knight one hop away. Do not mourn the queen — she only opens the door.
Mate in 1
Checkmate in a single move — find it.
Mate in one: the combination is over, only the final precise shot remains. The method is simple — list every check you have and test the three escapes against each: king moves, blocks, and capturing the checker. If none of them works, it is mate. The classic blunder is falling in love with the first check you see and missing the one escape hatch.
Absolute pin
A piece is pinned against its king — it cannot legally move.
An absolute pin freezes a piece on the line between its own king and your long-range attacker: moving it is simply illegal. The pattern is three units on one straight line — your bishop, rook or queen, an enemy piece, and the enemy king behind it. A pinned piece neither attacks nor defends anything: treat it as if it were off the board. Pile up on it, ideally with a pawn, because running away is against the rules.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 012
Similar puzzles
In your browser or in the Android app. Nothing to install · Free, no ads