Rescue the pawn to e5
li-0Foe2Opens 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 2257 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
Black 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 d4, rook d1 e5, pawn a2 b2 c2 f2 g2 g3.
Black: king e7, queen c6, rook d8 h8, pawn g5 a6 f6 h6 b7 c7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 21.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 25 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on e7.
It is Black to move on move 21, with 4 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. Black are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
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
21... fxe5 22. Qxe5+ Kf7
Why it works
- Best move. pawn to e5 is exactly what the engine plays (+4.2).
- Well found: king to f7 (+4.8).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Qxe5+, then Kf7 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 21… fxe5 — pawn to e5 (capture)
- 22. Qxe5+ — queen to e5 (capture) with check
- Kf7 — king to f7
Types in this puzzle
Winning blow
Find the strike that wins material by force.
A winning blow is a forced material gain that does not fit a single textbook motif. The general tactical recipe applies: spot loose pieces, an awkwardly placed king, overloaded lines. Go through the forcing moves in order of violence — checks, captures, threats — because most combinations start with one of them. Do not judge by feel: calculate the concrete line until the outcome is beyond doubt.
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).
Pack 015
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