Black and White

kuznecov and plaskin chess problem

This week’s puzzle has a twist: Imagine that the board has been rolled into a cylinder so that the a- and h-files are joined and pieces can move across the boundary. How can White mate in two moves?

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1. Ra5! The rook tours the fifth rank and returns to its original square, forcing 1. … Kc1 2. Ra1#. The normal-seeming 1. Rxa6, which would ordinarily lead to the same mate, here fails because Black can take the rook. By Kuznecov and Plaskin, from Miodrag Petković, Mathematics and Chess, 1997.

February 14, 2014February 23, 2014 | Puzzles