Skewer: queen to a3 (e3)
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Skewer: a valuable piece is forced to move, exposing the one behind it.
Difficulty 1815 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Deflection drags a defender away from its duty. Identify the enemy piece that guards a key square or mate, then force it to move — with a check, a capture or a threat it must answer — and strike where it no longer defends.
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.
A skewer is a pin reversed — the valuable piece stands in front and, when it moves, the piece behind falls. Line your rook, bishop or queen up against the king or queen and win whatever is hiding behind it.
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 c1, queen e3, bishop f5, knight h7, pawn a2 b2 f2 c4 d5.
Black: king d6, queen e7, rook h8, bishop c8, pawn e5 a6 b6 f6 c7 f7.
9 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 26.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (20 against 23; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on c1, the black king on d6.
It is White to move on move 26, with 42 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): g, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: e.
The White king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
26. Qa3+ c5 27. dxc6+ Kxc6 28. Qxe7
Why it works
- Great move! queen to a3 keeps the pressure (+7.4).
- Well found: pawn to c6 (+7.6).
- Strong! queen to e7 is the sharp choice (+7.7).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead c5, then dxc6+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 26. Qa3+ — queen to a3 with check
- c5 — pawn to c5
- 27. dxc6+ — pawn to c6 (capture) with check
- Kxc6 — king to c6 (capture)
- 28. Qxe7 — queen to e7 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Discovered check
The moving piece opens a check — and is free to grab anything meanwhile.
With a discovered check the moving piece unmasks a check from the piece standing behind it. While the king deals with the check, the piece that moved grabs whatever it likes, free of charge. Look for your long-range piece on a line with the enemy king, with exactly one of your own pieces in between. The rule: among all the ways to step aside, pick the one that captures or attacks the most expensive loot.
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.
Counter-strike
Don't defend — answer the threat with a bigger one.
The counter-strike: instead of defending against the threat, you answer with a bigger threat of your own. While your opponent grabs a pawn, you deliver mate — the arithmetic favors you. Look for a counter when direct defenses fail: do you have a check, an attack on the queen, a mating threat? The beginner's error is meeting every threat with a reflexive defense without checking the counterattacking resources first.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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