Discovered attack: knight to g4 (e5)
li-08QJLnaming tag (square·N)Opens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1908 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A discovered attack fires when one piece steps aside and unmasks the piece behind it. Look for your own units that block a rook, bishop or queen: moving the front piece — ideally with a threat of its own — springs two attacks in one move.
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 g1, queen c2, rook b1 f1, bishop c1 d5, knight c3, pawn e2 h2 a3 b3 g3 c4 f4.
Black: king g8, queen h3, rook b8 f8, bishop c6 f6, knight e5, pawn a6 g6 b7 e7 f7 h7.
14 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 19.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (35 against 34; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 19, with 42 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: c.
The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
19... Ng4 20. e3 Bxc3 21. Bxc6 bxc6
Why it works
- Great move! knight to g4 keeps the pressure (+4.6).
- Well found: bishop to c3 (+4.6).
- Strong! pawn to c6 is the sharp choice (+4.8).
- You win a piece — the bishop.
- If instead e3, then Bxc3 and you win the knight.
Move by move
- 19… Ng4 — knight to g4
- 20. e3 — pawn to e3
- Bxc3 — bishop to c3 (capture)
- 21. Bxc6 — bishop to c6 (capture)
- bxc6 — pawn to c6 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
Only move
Everything else loses — find the only move that holds.
An only move is a position where everything loses except one single continuation. You cannot play "by hand" here: run through fundamentally different defenses — run away, block, trade, counterattack — and discard the ones that fail. The hallmark of these puzzles is that the obvious moves lose quickly while the solution often looks strange. First understand exactly what the threat is — then the one saving move reveals itself.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 014
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