Rescue the pawn to c5
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2577 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 b4, rook e1 e3, knight g2, pawn a2 f2 h2 g3.
Black: king f8, queen d5, rook e8, bishop h3, knight e5, pawn b6 a7 c7 f7 g7 h7.
9 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 28.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 26 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 f8.
It is Black to move on move 28, with 5 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 4 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
28... c5 29. Nf4 cxb4 30. Nxd5 Nf3+
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to c5 keeps the pressure (+5.8).
- Well found: pawn to b4 (+6.0).
- Strong! knight to f3 is the sharp choice (+6.1).
- You win decisive material (+6.1).
- If instead Nf4, then cxb4 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 28… c5 — pawn to c5
- 29. Nf4 — knight to f4
- cxb4 — pawn to b4 (capture)
- 30. Nxd5 — knight to d5 (capture)
- Nf3+ — knight to f3 with check
Types in this puzzle
Royal fork
A fork with check: the king must move, and the second piece is lost.
A royal fork is a fork with check — one of the two targets is the king itself. The check must be answered first, so nobody is left to rescue the second piece. Look for squares where your piece gives check and simultaneously attacks an undefended queen or rook. It is the most reliable fork of all, because your opponent literally has no choice.
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.
Blocking save
Block the check with tempo — and turn the game around.
The blocking save: you interpose a piece against the check — not passively, but with tempo, so the blocker creates a threat of its own. Such a block turns defense into attack. Whenever you are checked, compare all three replies — capture, move the king, interpose — and among the interpositions hunt for the one that counterattacks. The mistake is automatically stepping aside with the king when an active block would have turned the game around.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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