Eight curated positions, White to move in every one. Click a piece, then click a square, and see instantly if you found the winning move.
Click a piece to see its legal moves highlighted, then click a square to play.
Find the right move and get an explanation. Miss it and the puzzle resets for another try.
Four checkmate-in-1 puzzles and four fork, skewer and pin tactics to spot.
Every puzzle is White to move — find the single best move.
Chess puzzles isolate a single decisive idea from a full game and ask you to find it without any of the surrounding noise. The four checkmate puzzles here are genuine, hand-verified mate-in-1 positions built around classic patterns — a back-rank mate, a two-rook ladder mate, and a smothered mate finish. The four tactics puzzles use knight forks, a bishop skewer and a rook pin to win material rather than deliver mate outright.
You don't need to know full chess theory to enjoy them — just how each piece moves, and an eye for the one move that changes everything.
A king boxed in by its own pawns on the back rank is one of the most common mating patterns in real games.
A knight fork attacks two pieces at once, so the defender can only save one of them.
Lining up two enemy pieces on the same line lets one attacking piece threaten both in a single move.
Every puzzle here has exactly one intended solution, which keeps the focus on recognizing the pattern.
Questions about controls, difficulty and progress.
Click the piece you want to move — its legal destination squares are highlighted — then click the square you want to move it to.
The board briefly shows your attempt, tells you it wasn't the solution, and then resets the puzzle to its starting position so you can try again.
Just the basics of how each piece moves. Every puzzle here is White to move, and only White's pieces can be selected.
Yes, the checkmate puzzles are genuine, verified mate-in-1 positions, and the tactics puzzles are single winning moves such as forks, skewers and pins.
No. The count of puzzles you've solved is saved only in this browser's local storage on this device and is never uploaded anywhere.