Rescue the knight to e5 (f3)
li-08xUVnaming tag (square·N)Opens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 1845 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Here the task is defensive: one of your pieces is under attack and must be rescued without losing more. Look for a move that saves it with tempo — a counter-check, an equal counter-attack or an interposition — rather than a passive retreat.
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 e1, rook b1 f1, bishop c1, knight d1 f3, pawn c2 g2 h2 b3 d3 a4.
Black: king g8, queen d8, rook a8 f8, bishop c6 g7, knight e5, pawn c5 d5 e6 g6 a7 b7 h7.
13 white and 14 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 16.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (34 against 35; 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 White to move on move 16, with 41 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: e.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
16. Nxe5 Rxf1+ 17. Kxf1 Qf6+ 18. Nf3
Why it works
- Great move! knight to e5 keeps the pressure (+2.7).
- Well found: king to f1 (+2.8).
- Strong! knight to f3 is the sharp choice (+2.8).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Rxf1+, then Kxf1 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 16. Nxe5 — knight to e5 (capture)
- Rxf1+ — rook to f1 (capture) with check
- 17. Kxf1 — king to f1 (capture)
- Qf6+ — queen to f6 with check
- 18. Nf3 — knight to f3
Types in this puzzle
Discovered attack
A piece steps aside and opens a second attack from the piece behind it.
A discovered attack works like a curtain: one piece steps off the line and unveils the long-range piece behind it. The beauty is that the moving piece can create a second threat of its own — two attacks in one move. Look for your stacked pairs: a bishop or rook behind a knight or pawn, aimed through them at something valuable. Send the front piece to the most aggressive square — a discovery without a second threat wastes half its power.
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.
Save the piece
The attacked piece can be saved — with profit.
Saving the piece: one of your pieces is attacked, and the job is not to lose it for nothing. There are several tools: retreat with tempo, defend it, block the attack, or create a bigger counter-threat. Before retreating automatically, look for a retreat that attacks something — you save the piece and gain time in one move. The typical mistake is panicking onto the first available square, where the piece gets trapped again.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
Similar puzzles
In your browser or in the Android app. Nothing to install · Free, no ads