How to play
Choose a difficulty and press New game. The goal is shown above the board — mate in 1, 2 or 3 — and it is your move. Click a piece, then the square to move it to (or use the arrow keys and Enter). In a mate in 2 or 3 the other side answers each of your moves with its most stubborn defence, and you keep going until it is checkmate.
Only a move that forces mate in the moves you have left is accepted. Any other move is turned back and counted as a miss, and you try again. If you give up, the game shows you the move.
Where the puzzles come from
The puzzles come from the Lichess puzzle database, which Lichess publishes under a CC0 public-domain licence. Each puzzle there is a position from a real game, with a rating earned from how players fared on it.
We kept only puzzles whose rating is well established — a rating deviation of 90 or less and at least 300 attempts — because a rating based on a handful of tries is a guess. Then every puzzle was re-played through our own chess engine to prove three things: the mate is forced against every defence, it takes exactly the number of moves the puzzle says, and the first move is the only one that works.
Five difficulty bands
The bands are cut by the puzzle's Lichess rating: starter under 1200, easy 1200–1499, medium 1500–1799, hard 1800–2199, expert 2200 and up. Because those ratings come from real solving attempts, a hard puzzle here is one that people demonstrably found hard — not one that merely looks complicated.
A mate in 1 can be very hard and a mate in 3 can be easy, so the number of moves and the band are separate choices of the puzzle, not the same thing.
Why practise mating patterns
Checkmate puzzles train pattern recognition: the back-rank mate, smothered mates, mates with a queen and knight. Recognising the pattern quickly is most of what separates strong tactical players from the rest, and short forced mates are the cleanest way to practise it because there is exactly one thing to find.
This is chess skill, and it grows with practice. We do not present it as a measure of general intelligence.
Frequently asked questions
What do the difficulty bands mean in rating terms?
They follow the Lichess puzzle rating of each puzzle: starter is under 1200; easy is 1200–1499; medium is 1500–1799; hard is 1800–2199; expert is 2200 and up. A puzzle rating is not the same as a playing rating, but players near a band's range usually find it a fair challenge.
Why did my move count as a miss when it gives check?
A check is not enough — the move has to force mate against every possible defence in the moves remaining. Some checks let the king escape; the puzzle has exactly one first move that forces mate.
Are these puzzles from real games?
Yes. Every position comes from a real game played on Lichess, collected in its public puzzle database.
Do I need an account?
No. The two easiest bands are free without an account. Signing in is free and opens every band and keeps your results; anything you solved as a guest is moved to your account when you sign in.
Sources
- Lichess open database: puzzles, database.lichess.org (CC0 public-domain dedication).