Entertaining chess tasks sweeten life. Today's task: White's move, mate in two. The position comes from Erich Brunner in 1926 - and it is interesting precisely because it doesn't look like a typical two-move position at all. You try out direct chess bids, check rook moves, look for queen moves and after a few minutes you notice: They are not the obvious ideas.
The solution is:
1. Te1!The rook moves to e1. It preemptively positions itself on the back rank, protecting the king against Qh1 and thus freeing the knight. And with that, Black's position is frozen in a very unpleasant way. The rook was superfluous on the fourth rank anyway (the rook on a4 alone covers b4 and c4). Black is in zugzwang: he has to move, but every move damages something. A few variations from Black.:
1. ... Dd4 2. Dxe8#
1. ... c4 2. Dxc4#
1. ... Kxa4 2. Da6#
1. ... Lc6 2. Da6#
1. ... L~ 2. Dd7#
1. ... Dh1 2. Sxc3#If the black queen moves differently, the protection of e8 or c3 is lost, depending on the square. The nice thing about it: Many obvious moves narrowly fail. For example, a rook move to d4 looks very tempting, but then the black queen has resources on the diagonal. Direct chess bids seem intuitive at first, but are more likely to lead to checkmate in three. A silent move that doesn't force anything - except that every Black move loses afterwards.