Cordingley puzzle 112 #chess

White to play and win

Solution

Intuitively, you want to play 1 Qh5, spotting 1…gh 2 Bh7 mate, and otherwise mate on either h7 or h8. But then you see 1…Qh2+ and queens come off, and it might then be level.

I then stumbled and bumbled around. I tried 1 Qh5 again, tried 1…Qh2+ again (alas, I do tend to repeat myself, hoping next time round will be better). Then I gave up, put the position aside, and left it.

Picking up the position again, 1 Rd7!! came to me in a flash. Game over. I would have liked to have said I followed Purdy's consider all smites maxim, or that I went through concepts such as decoy, but, no, I didn't, the answer came to me in a way more like Willy Hendrik's Move first, think later.

Posted with Blogsy