Cordingley puzzle 178 #chess

White to play and win

Solution

I think I made hard work of this problem, or maybe it is indeed hard. I do find some positions easier to visualise than others. Here, the spread out pieces, the threats and counters, the pinned Ne4, LPDO Rd1, threats of first rank rate, made visualising complex.

For a good while, I focussed on the wrong move: 1 Qf5; why I chose this one, before settling on 1 Qg5, I don't know. It meant that I looked at a lot of lines where the black queen got to f3, dislodging the stability of the Ne4, and hitting the LPDO Rd1: I kept trying to find the (nevertheless) winning blow, eventually giving up.

Next, I looked at 1 Bg7, which is a cute switch of move order. Again, it doesn't appear to quite work, at least before I check the position with an engine.

Eventually, I stood back, recalled the motto 'long variation, bad variation', and refocused: 1 Qg5 came to mind, and things quickly fell into place. The ideas found with 1Qf5 now work far better, and proving it was a solution was not difficult.

On reflection, why wasn't 1 Qg5 obvious to me? It should have been.

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