Mate in 3: discovered attack on d5
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Mate in 3: a forced sequence that ends in checkmate.
Difficulty 2366 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White 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.
In a mate in three every move must be forcing; the defender should never get a free tempo. Find the check or threat that herds the king, calculate the single defence to each, and confirm the net closes on the third 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 e2, rook a1 g1, bishop d3 g7, knight b3, pawn a2 b2 f2 h2 c3 e4.
Black: king h7, queen d8, rook a8 g8, bishop e7, knight f6, pawn d5 c6 a7 b7 f7.
12 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 18.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 5 points of material (25 against 30; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on e2, the black king on h7.
It is White to move on move 18, with 45 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 6 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
18. exd5+ Ne4 19. Bxe4+ f5 20. Bxf5#
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to d5 keeps the pressure (#2).
- Well found: bishop to e4 (#1).
- Strong! bishop to f5 is the sharp choice (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 3.
- If instead Ne4, then Bxe4+ and you win the knight.
Move by move
- 18. exd5+ — pawn to d5 (capture) with check
- Ne4 — knight to e4
- 19. Bxe4+ — bishop to e4 (capture) with check
- f5 — pawn to f5
- 20. Bxf5# — bishop to f5 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Two-bishop mate
The bishop pair sweeps two adjacent diagonals — the king has nowhere to hide.
The two-bishop mate rakes two adjacent diagonals: one bishop mates while the other seals off the escape squares. The bishops complement each other perfectly — living on opposite colors, together they cover an unbroken strip of the board. The pattern usually appears at the edge or in the corner where the king was pressed beforehand. Treasure the bishop pair until the attack comes — on an open board two adjacent diagonals become a solid wall.
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.
Mate in 3
A forced checkmate in three moves.
Mate in three is a forced staircase: each of your moves narrows the opponent's choices, and the third one ends the game. Look for the start among checks and sacrifices — quiet first moves are rare in mating problems, but deliciously sneaky. Keep the tree in your head: every defense gets its own branch. Do not stop calculating after move two — see the final mating picture with your own eyes.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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