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Welcome to OzProblems.com, a site all about chess problems in Australia and around the world! Whether you are new to chess compositions or an experienced solver, we have something for you. Our aim is to promote the enjoyment of chess problems, which are at once interesting puzzles and the most artistic form of chess.
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The weekly problem’s solution will appear on the following Saturday, when a new work is quoted.
See last week's problem with solution: No.763.
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Walkabout
Deceptive mate-in-one problems
9 Jul. 2025
By convention, directmate problems are solved from White’s perspective, and over time the stipulated task of “White to play and forces mate in N moves” has become abbreviated to “Mate in N.” An even more basic convention requires problem positions to be legal, or reachable from the initial array. What if these two rules are at odds in a given problem, in the sense that the position is illegal solely because Black couldn’t possibly have played the last move? Ordinarily, when such a situation occurs by accident, the White-to-play problem is deemed invalid for breaking the second convention. However, a branch of composition has developed that bends the first rule by exploiting the seeming ambiguity of “Mate in N,” which doesn’t specify whose turn it is. In these problems, the position is carefully constructed so that Black couldn’t have made the prior move, and this fact – combined with the legality requirement – leads to the conclusion that White had moved last and it is Black’s turn to play in the diagram.
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