Chess Puzzles
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About This Game
Solve chess tactical puzzles from easy to grandmaster level. Find checkmates, forks, pins, and more. Track your progress and improve your rating.
How to play Chess Puzzles
Objective: Deliver the forced checkmate in each position by playing the winning sequence until the enemy king has no escape.
Every one of the 1,001 positions is a forced checkmate, and you play the side shown by the 'Play as White' or 'Play as Black' label. Click a piece or start dragging it to reveal its legal targets as dots, then click or drop on the destination. A correct move triggers the opponent's automatic reply, then the prompt 'Find the next move.' A pawn reaching the last rank opens a promotion menu for queen, rook, bishop, or knight.
The move checker accepts the intended solution and any alternative that still forces mate, verified by a limited search; on the final move any immediate checkmate is accepted. A move that lets the king survive shakes red. Three modes share this board: Practice gives unlimited retries, two hints, and Prev, Retry, Skip, and Next buttons; Survival ends your run on the first mistake; Timer runs a 1, 3, or 5 minute clock and counts your solves.
Two hints exist in Practice and the post-game Review only: the first paints the piece to move orange, the second adds the green destination. In Survival and Timer your score is the number of puzzles solved, submitted with a name and optional country flag to online leaderboards. The game-over card shows your wrong move beside the correct one and offers a Review Last Puzzle button that replays it with hints.
Tips and strategy
Every puzzle is mate
Because all 1,001 positions are forced checkmates, ignore winning material and hunt only for king-hunting moves: checks and sacrifices that open lines or strip escape squares from the enemy king.
Read the board colors
The red square marks the king in check, and the yellow-green pair marks the last move played. Use them to follow the opponent's forced reply and confirm your moves keep the king boxed in.
Sacrifices are the point
Many puzzles carry the sacrifice theme, so giving up a queen or rook is often the key move. The engine accepts any line that still forces mate, so trust a sound sacrifice even when it looks wild.
Ration your two hints
The first hint only lights the source square orange. Before spending the second on the green destination, try to name the target square yourself to train the pattern.
Survival: bank easy mates
Difficulty climbs after 3 and again after 7 solves, so the early positions are the gentlest. Solve those carefully, because one wrong click ends the run with no retry.
The history of Chess Puzzles
Chess descends from the Indian game chaturanga, played by around the sixth century, which passed through Persia as shatranj and reached medieval Europe before gaining its modern rules by the sixteenth century. Composed checkmate problems are nearly as old as the game: shatranj manuscripts collected mating positions, called mansubat, for study. The puzzles here come from the Lichess open puzzle database, released into the public domain, each drawn from a real game and verified as a forced mate.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to find the exact move the puzzle wants?
Not always. The checker accepts the listed solution and any alternative that still forces checkmate, confirmed by a limited search. On the final move, any immediate checkmate counts. Only moves that let the king survive are marked incorrect.
What happens after I play a correct move?
In multi-move puzzles the opponent replies automatically after about half a second, then the status reads 'Find the next move.' Puzzles range from mate in three up to mate in seven, so expect several of your own moves before mate.
Are there hints, and how many?
Practice mode and the post-game Review give you two hints per puzzle. The first paints the piece to move orange; the second adds the green destination square. Survival and Timer modes have no hints, so you commit to each move with no help.
Is my progress saved, and where do scores go?
Practice progress, meaning solved puzzles plus your current and best streak, is stored in your browser on this device. Survival and Timer scores you submit go to online leaderboards, ranked separately for Survival and for the 1, 3, and 5 minute timers.